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FREDERIC  W.SANDERS 


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Sanders    - 


Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 

Los  Angeles 

Form  L   I 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


5     192ft 


JUL  1  S  ib2i 

APR  1  8  1929 
'^'A^  17  J929 


JUL    : 
DEC  U  ^9^^ 
NOV  6      1958 


-15»n-8,'24 


THE 

REORGANIZATION  OF  OUR 

SCHOOLS 

SOME  EDUCATIONAL  POSTULATES 

AND 

PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS  AS  TO  THE 
ORGANIZATION  OF  SCHOOLS 


BY 


FREDERIC  W.  SANDERS,  A.  M.  (Harvard),  Ph.  D.  (Chicago) 

Sometime  Member  of  the  Territorial  Board  of  Education  of  New  Mexico,  President  of 
the  New  Mexico  College  of  Agriculture  and  Mechanic  Arts,  Principal  of  the  Lincoln 
(Neb.)  High  School,  Assistant  Professor  of  Pedagogy  in  West  Virginia  University, 
Lecturer  on  Social  Economics  and  Education  for  the  University  of  Chicago,  Honorary 
Fellow  at  Clark  University,  University  Fellow  in  Sociology  at  Columbia  University, 
etc. 


THE  PALMER  COMPANY 
BOSTON 

66060 


Copyright  1915 

BY 

The  Palmer  Company 


Newcomb  &  Gauss,  Printers, 
Salem,  Mass. 


30.\  \ 


THE    AUTHOR'S    FELLOW  WORKERS    IN    EDUCATION 

but  especially  to 

JOHN  DEWEY 

a  social  philosopher 

with  the  scientist's  (leterniination  to  test  his  theories;  in 

whose  Chicago  Elementary  School  the  author  first 

saw  what  interest  could  do  for  cultural 

development  and  practical  efficiency^ 

G.  STANLEY  HALL 
genetic  psychologist 
tvhose  great  idea,  richly  stored  ynind,  and  fecund  imagina- 
tion have  made  him  the  most  inspiring  and  sug- 
gestive of  teachers 
and 

JOHN  H.   FRANCIS 

practical  idealist 

with  the  vision  of  the  school  as  a  microcosm  in  which  the 

child  shall  find  the  man  he  should  be,  and  with 

the  determination   to   realize  that   vision 

^t)t0  Boofc  10  SDedtcateti 


PREFACE 

If  the  author  has  read  aright  the  signs  of  the 
times,  as  they  appear  in  educational  conferences  and 
in  popular  discussions,  there  is  now  a  really  urgent 
demand  for  practical  and  reasonably  definite  sug- 
gestions  as  to  the  reorganization  of  our  schools. 
There  is  especial  need  for  a  definite  plan  that  shall 
show  how  to  retain  that  luhich  is  essential  to  the 
general  education  of  every  future  man  and  woman, 
at  the  same  time  that  a  place  is  found  for  the.  vari- 
ous forms  of  special,  technical  or  other  vocational 
training  that  may  he  necessary  for  the  individual 
hoy  or  girl. 

A  year  spent  in  studying  not  merely  the  schools, 
but  the  economic,  political  and  social  conditions 
underlying  and  overlying  the  school  system  of  Ger- 
many has  convinced  the  author  that  Europe  at  its 
best  has  not  found  a  solution  for  the  most  pressing  of 
our  educational  problems.  The  first  problem  for 
our  educators  to  solve  is  that  suggested  at  the  close 
of  the  preceding  paragraph;  a  problem  that  is  all 
the  more  serious  because  the  ardent  advocates  of 
general  culture,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  practical 
efficiency,  on  the  other,  alike  refuse  to  face  it,  while 
the  practical  schoolmen  of  our  own  country,  fol- 
lowing the  lead  of  Europe,  seem  generally  to  think 
that  they  have  disposed  of  the  difficulty  when  they 


VI  PEEFACE 

can  say  that  their  schools  are  prepared  to  give  either 
general  culture  or  technical  training,  or,  in  some 
cases,  will  give  a  mixture  of  both  in  such  proportions 
as  the  pupil  or  his  parents  may  elect, — thus  reliev- 
ing the  educator  of  his  special  duty  to  society  and  to 
youth,  by  unloading  his  most  weighty  responsibility 
on  to  the  shoulders  of  the  ignorant  boy  or  girl  or  of  a 
parent  that  may  be  no  less  ignorant. 

Deeply  impressed  by  this  social  problem  of  the 
educator,  and  hardly  less  so  by  the  psychological 
problem  of  how  to  plan  the  ivorh  of  the  school  to 
meet  and  make  the  most  of  the  several  stages  of  the 
young  being's  physical  and  mental  development  as  he 
passes  from  early  childhood  to  late  adolescence,  the 
author,  on  his  return  from  Europe,  sought  to  with- 
draw wholly  from  the  field  of  "higher"  and  "normal" 
education,  and  to  obtain  a  position  in  which  he 
could  work  directly  at  the  problems  of  elementary 
and  secondary  education.  During  four  years  as 
principal  of  the  high  school  of  l^ebraska's  capital 
and  educational  center  he  was  enabled  to  put  to  the 
test  much  of  that  which  is  suggested  in  the  following 
pages  for  the  "secondary  transition"  (or  intermedi- 
ate) department  and  for  the  "adolescent"  depart- 
ment (or  high  school  proper).  He  has  not  yet  been 
able  to  make  the  same  rigorous  test,  under  his  own 
direction,  of  the  whole  of  that  which  relates  to  the 
play  school,  primary  transition  department,  and  the 
elementary  department  (or  "grammar  school",  as  it 
is  called  in  many  of  our  cities),  although  much  of 


PKEFACE  Vll 

this  he  has  observed  in  successful  operation  in  one 
school  or  another  in  America  or  Europe.  A  great 
part  of  what  is  here  suggested  has  been  presented  to 
bodies  of  teachers  and  school  administrators  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  United  States,  and  practically  all 
of  it  has  been  presented  in  the  form  of  lectures  to 
the  summer  school  of  the  University  of  N^ebraska 
and  to  the  pedagogical  department  of  Clark  Univer- 
sity. The  reception  accorded  it  in  the  limited  fields 
indicated  and  the  comments  of  able,  practical  educa- 
tors has  encouraged  the  writer  to  believe  that  the 
time  is  ripe  for  the  publication  of  this  essay  in  educa- 
tional organization. 

While  the  purpose  of  the  author's  work  is  prima- 
rily practical,  yet  he  is  unwilling  to  put  it  forth 
without  a  brief  presentation  of  the  educational  phi- 
losophy underlying  it,  and  he  trusts  that  the  eight 
postulates  preceding  the  plan  of  organization  will 
not  be  thought  to  detract  from  the  practical  nature 
of  the  work.  While  a  few  ultra-practical  school- 
men might  be  better  pleased  if  this  introduction 
were  omitted,  the  author  is  reasonably  confident  that 
the  greater  number  of  school  administrators  and 
teachers  will  feel  that  the  preliminary  theses  add 
to  the  value  of  the  work,  and  of  course  they  will 
make  it  more  available  as  a  basis  for  reading-circle 
work  and  normal-school  discussion. 

F.  W.  S. 
Los  Angeles,  California. 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS 

Postulates 

I.  Purpose  of  education  to  enable  members  of  society  to 
attain  highest  possible  development  page     1 

Corollaries    la  page  1 

&  page  1 

2  page  1 

Remarks   in   elucidation    of    postulate  page  2 

II.  The  human  being  a  psycho-physical  unit  page  6 
Eemarks  page  6 

III.  Three  stages  of  individual  development  and  two 
transitional  periods,  of  great  significance  for  the  organ- 
ization of  education  page  7 
Remarks                                                                              page     9 

IV.  Correspondence  between  development  of  race  and  of 
individual  significant  for  education  page  10 
Remarks                                                                             page   10 

V.  Education  should  be  influenced,  but  not  dominated, 
by  the  inherent  tendencies  of  developing  youth,  page  11 
Eemarks  page  13 

VI.  In  education  the  policy  of  the  open  door  should  be 
maintained  page  16 
Eemarks                                                                             page    16 

VII.  The  best  education  is  the  most  economical,  page  17 
Remarks  page  17 

VIII.  Now  is  the  time  for  practical  reforms  in  the 
school  page  18 
Remarks                                                                                 page  18 

Practical  Suggestions 

I.  General  Plan  of  Organizing  Schools,  with  the  psycho- 
physical development  as  the  basis  of  classification,  with 
constant  opportunity  for  readjustment,  with  a  mini- 
mum of  work  for  the  less  gifted,  with  much  individual 
work  within  the  classes,  and  with  the  possibility  for 
outside  w^ork  in  cultivation  of  a  special  interest  through- 
out the  school  course  page  19 


X  SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS 

§1.     In  general  V^ge  19 

§2.  Economy  of  this  Plan  Compared  with  the  Plan 
Usually  Followed  page  22 

§3.  Enfranchisement  and  Stimulation  of  the  Elemen- 
tary School  Teacher,  not  bound  to  an  iron  schedule 
for  an  arbitrary  period,  with  uniform  results  for  all 
pupils,  but  entrusted  with  the  guidance  of  the  devel- 
opment of  a  group  of  children  throughout  a  natural 
period  of  their  psycho-physical  development,  page  25 
§4.     Benefits  to  Different  Classes  of  Pupils  page  30 

§5.  No  Exceptional  Demands  upon  Teacher,  expert 
supervision  being  assumed  page  37 

§6.  Plan  to  be  considered  with  reference  to  the  con- 
tent of  the  curriculum,  etc.,  of  the  several  depart- 
ments  of   the  school  page   43 

IT.     Scope  of  the  Several  Departments  of  the  School 

§1.     The  Play  School  page  43 

§2.     The  Primary  Transition  Department  page  52 

§3.     The  Elementary  Department 

A.  General  view  page  53 

B.  Curriculum 

1.  Beckoning  and  Mathematics  page  54 

2.  Language  page  56 

3.  Economic    and    cultural    development  of    man- 
kind, or  History  page  58 

4.  Geography  (connecting  3  and  5)  page  59 

5.  Nature  Study,  or  Elementary  Science,  page  60 

6.  (a)    Art   and    (6)    Manual  Training  page  60 

7.  Physical  Culture  page  61 

C.  Usual  Daily  Program :  Discussion  page  61 
Table  page  68 

§4.     Secondary  Transition  Department 

A.  General  View  page  69 

B.  Curriculum 

1.     Required  Courses 
a.     Science  pa-ge  75 

6.     History    (and  Government)  pa^ge  81 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS  XI 

e.     Literature    and    Esthetics  page  84 

d.  Physical    Culture  page  90 

e.  Art  page  90 

2.  Elective  Courses  (either  practical  or  cultural) 

page  91 

3.  Optional  Course  page  91 
C.     Daily   Program                                                 page  91 

S5.     Secondary    Department,    or    Adolescent    Depart- 
ment 

A.  General   View  page  93 

B.  First  Year's  Work 

1.  English  page  94 

2.  History  page  94 

3.  Laboratory  Course  in  Science  page  95 
4  and  5.  Physical  Culture  and  Art  page  96 
6.     Elective  Work  (vocational  or  cultural)  page  96 

page  96 

C.  After  the  First  Year  page  99 

ITI.     Adaptation  of  Plan  to  Several  Classes  of  Young  Peo- 
ple 

§1,     Girls  page  104 

§2.     The  Normal  Child 

In  the  Play  School  page  107 

In  the  Primary  Transition  Department  page  107 

In  the  Elementary  Department  page  110 

In  the  Secondary  Transition  Department       page  110 

In  the  Adolescent  Department  page   110 

§3.     The  Child  of  Slow  Development  page  113 

§4.     The   Precocious   Child  page  115 

§5.     The  Young  Person  Who  Enters  School  Very  Late 

page  116 
§6.     The   Industrial    Worker   and   the    Evening   School 

page  119 


The  Reorganization  of  Our  Schools 

POSTULATES 

I.  The  purpose  of  education  is  to  assist  the  indi- 
vidual to  make  the  most  of  himself,  and  thus  do 
most  for  others;  to  enable  him  to  grow  into  the 
largest  life  possible  for  one  having  so  rich  an  en- 
dowment as  that  with  which  he  is  provided  at 
birth. 

C orollaries  of  this  truth  are : 

la.  The  child  himself  must  be  studied  in  order 
that  education  may  fit  his  needs  and  adapt  it- 
self to  his  several  stages  of  development, 
b.  Since,  at  any  given  stage  of  its  development, 
the  being  that  is,  is  the  outcome  of  the  develop- 
ment of  an  earlier  stage  of  life,  and  as  long  as 
its  development  is  incomplete  its  present  condi- 
tion must  be  considered  with  reference  to  the 
later  stages  through  which  it  is  to  pass,  it  fol- 
lows that,  to  interpret  aright  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual child  of  today,  we  must  study  his  past 
and  that  of  the  ancestral  forms  of  life  out  of 
which  his  has  developed,  and  we  must  consider 
also  all  that  is  known  of  the  later  stages  of  de- 
velopment of  similar  beings. 
2.  Information,  carefully  prepared,  must  be 
given  to  the  child,  in  addition  to  whatever  else 


2  THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

may  be  done  for  him  in  the  effort  to  provide 
him  with  a  suitable  environment  for  such  a  de- 
velopment of  all  the  nascent  powers  of  mind 
and  body  as  will  most  enlarge  his  life.  Because 
as  far  as  possible  every  individual  of  each  suc- 
ceeding generation  should  be  given  the  vantage 
ground  afforded  by  a  general  knowledge  of  what 
has  so  far  been  achieved  by  any  of  the  human 
race,  a  very  important  part  of  the  business  of  the 
educator  is  to  summarize  what  men  have  so  far 
learned  in  art  and  science  and  philosophy,  and 
to  impart  a  knowledge  of  the  principal  results 
of  these  achievemejits  of  mankind  to  the  indi- 
viduals of  the  rising  generation,  even  though  it 
may   be    impossible   to   explain   to   the    greater 
number  of  the  latter  how  these  facts  and  truths 
were  first  brought  to  light. 
Remarks    in    elucidation    of    the    postulate: — To 
speak  somewhat  more  in  detail,  although  it  may  be 
difficult  to  make  the  necessary  distinctions  as  clearly 
as  they  ought  to  be  made,  we  should,  I  think,  recog- 
nize that  the  purpose  of  education  is  neither,  on  the 
one  hand,  to  make  the  individual  life  an  ideal  one, 
in  the  sense  of  bringing  it  into  conformity  with  an 
a  priori  ideal  having  a  definite  content,  nor,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  fit  the  individual  to  play  a  prescribed 
part  in  that  particular  organization  of  society  into 
which  he   happens    to   be  born.      Such   educational 
ideals  are  too  static.     The  one  assumes  that  we  al- 
ready know  the  content  of  perfection  of  life;  the 


THE    EEORGAXIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  6 

other,  that  the  present  organization  of  society  is  a 
final  form  to  which  not  alone  the  present  life  of  the 
individual,  but  that  of  all  future  individuals,  must 
be  conformed. 

It  does  not  seem  to  me  safe  to  assume  that  fitness 
for  one's  immediately  present  environment  is  the 
norm  by  which  to  judge  of  human  progress  or  of 
height  and  completeness  of  development  in  general. 
The  degenerate,  sightless  and  limbless  parasite  prob- 
ably has  such  fitness  in  the  highest  degTee ;  but  with 
this  perfect  adaptation  to  its  narrow  special  environ- 
ment the  power  of  adaptation  to  a  larger  and  more 
varied  environment  is  gone.  The  educator's  work 
should  no  more  be  determined  by  a  narrow  interpre- 
tation of  the  theory  of  evolution  by  natural  selection 
than  it  should  be  prescribed  by  a  traditional  or  a 
purely  metaphysical  ideal  of  a  perfect  life.  "What 
seems  to  be  desirable  is  whf.t  might  be  called  a 
rational  opportmiis  n,  the  application  of  enlightened 
common  sense  to  the  preservation  of  a  sort  of  mov- 
ing equilibrium.  Xot  less  truly  a  part  of  man's 
nature  than  his  inherited  instincts  is  the  highly  de- 
veloped reason  by  which  he  is  enabled  not  alone  to 
adapt  his  conduct  to  quite  new  experiences,  but  also 
to  learn  things  not  immediately  necessary  for  his 
next  step  in  life ;  and,  as  a  result  of  this,  to  modify 
his  immediate  environment  or  to  pass  from  it  into 
one  that  his  cultivated  insight  leads  him  to  believe 
will  make  possible  for  him  a  larger  life,  i.  e.,  one 
that  may  be  less  in  harmony  with  that  immediate 


4  THE    REOKGANIZATIOX    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

environment  in  wliich  lie  was  born,  but  that  will  be 
in  more  perfect  harmony  with  the  universal  and  ap- 
parently unalterable  habits  of  the  Universe  at  large, 
so  far  as  he  has  learned  them,  and  that  will  thus,  by 
reason  of  a  more  perfect  unity  between  his  individual 
life  and  the  universal  existence,  give  him  the  largest, 
the  most  divine  life  possible  for  man. 

Studying  the  phenomena  of  life  in  the  full  light  of 
instinctive  and  rational  experience,  we  cannot  but 
learn  much  as  to  the  conditions  of  a  satisfactory 
life ;  and  each  one  of  us,  whether  as  private  individ- 
ual or  as  teacher,  is  answerable  to  society  as  well  as 
to  his  own  conscience  for  the  application  of  what  he 
thus  learns.  To  me  personally,  it  seems  that  such  a 
study  of  life,  of  nature,  human  and  non-human, 
makes  it  evident  that  human  happiness  is  the  ideal 
for  human  effort,  and  that  the  greatest  happiness, 
quantitatively  considered  (if  that  conception  be  legit- 
imate), not  alone  for  the  race  at  large,  but  also  tor 
the  individual,  is  also  the  highest  happiness,  ethical- 
ly considered ;  that,  in  other  words,  our  happiness  is 
measured  by  the  largeness  of  our  love,  and  this  means 
the  breadth  of  our  sympathies,  which  in  turn  is  de- 
pendent upon  the  widest  possible  extent  of  knowl- 
edge, requiring  the  fullest  possible  symmetrical 
development  of  the  potentialities  of  our  natiirc, 
psychical  and  physical.  The  largest  possible  devel- 
opment of  our  nature  does  not  mean  the  fullest  pos- 
sible development  of  each  individual  tendency  that 
exists  in  a  human  being,  each  trait  being  considerevi 


THE    KEORGAXIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  5 

by  itself;  for  the  greatest  possible  development  of 
any  one  trait,  either  physical  or  mental,  would 
doubtless  mean  a  corresponding  suppression  of  many 
others:  but  the  largest  possible  development  of  the 
whole  nature  requires  the  maintenance  of  a  certain 
symmetry  and  proportion  in  the  cultivation  of  our 
special  instincts  and  abilities.  Only  so  great  a  de- 
velopment of  each  of  these  is  normally  desirable,  as 
is  consistent  with  the  largest  possible  development  of 
the  iL'hoIe  nature.  It  seems  to  me  that  this  principle, 
administered  in  the  light  of  experience  and  reason, 
is  quite  satisfactory.  It  is  true  that  the  recognition 
of  this  principle  makes  restraint  as  well  as  encour- 
agement a  part  of  the  work  of  education,  and  leaves 
it  to  the  educator's  discretion,  in  the  light  of  his 
whole  experience,  emotional,  instinctive  and  rational, 
to  determine  when  and  where  to  apply  the  brake 
and  when  and  where  to  encotirage  the  child's  im- 
pulses. But,  that  science  or  philosophy  should  be 
expected  to  give  us  an  unerring  rule  providing 
specifically  for  every  detail,  and  informing  us  in 
advance  just  exactly  to  what  extent  we  should  en- 
courage and  to  what  extent  restrain  the  several  nat- 
ural tendencies  of  each  individual,  seems  to  me  as 
childish  as  to  demand  the  moon  for  a  plaything.  He 
who  expects  from  the  study  of  nature,  of  evolution, 
of  the  spontaneotis  activity  of  the  universe,  to  derive 
such  a  formula,  has  profited  very  little  from  the  hard 
won  knowledge  man  has  so  far  gained  of  the  consti- 
tution of  the  universe:  for  that  knowledge  points  to 


G  THE    REORGANIZATIOX    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

the  truth  that  "eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  lib- 
erty," or,  in  other  words,   that  in  the  evolution  of 
humanity  man's  reason  as  well  as  his  instincts  have 
been   developed,   and  that  he  must  use  the  former 
continually,  as  well  as  the  latter,  to  adjust  his  own 
adult  life  and  the  life  of  his  offspring  to,  and  to  keep 
them  in  adjustment  with,  the  environment  formed 
by  the  complex  universal  existence  of  which  these 
individual  human  lives  are  a  part. 
II.     The  human  being  is  a  psycho-physical  unit  in 
which  the  association  of  mind  with   body  is   so 
intimate,  the  connection  so  close,  that  neither  can 
be  acted  upon  independently  of  the  other :  physical 
changes  involve  mental  changes ;  physical  culture 
involves  the  cultivation  of  certain  mental  states ; 
and  mental,  moral  and  spiritual  development  or?, 
possible    only    through    the    exercise    of   physical 
powers. 

Remarks: — ^^Vhile  it  is  true  that  one  may  culti- 
vate certain  physical  powers  to  an  extent  prejudicial 
to  certain  of  the  higher  psychical  powers,  or'  certain 
psychical  powers  in  such  a  way  as  to  neglect  and  in- 
jure many  physical  powers, — just  as  one  may  culti- 
vate one  physical  power  to  the  prejudice  of  another 
physical  power,  or  one  kind  of  psychical  activity 
to  the  prejudices  of  other  kinds  of  psychical  activity, 
— yet  in  general  the  highest  human  development  is 
dependent  upon  the  symmetrical  development  of 
mind  and  body,  a  high  degree  of  perfection  in  the 
former  being  dependent  upon  the  most  perfect  and 


THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  7 

symmetrical  development  of  the  latter ;  so  that  even 
if  the  development  of  our  bodily  powers,  if  physical 
culture  were  not  in  and  for  itself  a  highly  desirable 
end  of  education  (which,  however,  it  is),  it  would 
still  be  the  necessary  concern  of  the  educator  as  a 
sine  qua  non  for  the  best  mental  deA'elopment. 

In  this  connection  it  is  pertinent  to  quote  two 
statements  that  have  been  forcefully  put  by  Mr. 
Cephas  Guillet  in  his  article  on  "Recapitulation  and 
Education"  in  volume  VII  of  the  Pedagogical  Sem- 
inary. The  first  is  certainly  suggestive  even  if  its 
truth  has  not  yet  been  perfectly  established ;  and  the 
second  seems  to  me,  at  least,  to  be  as  certain  as  any 
truth  can  be  that  is  neither  given  us  by  intuition  (as 
is  the  fact  of  self-existence)  nor  capable  of  a  mathe- 
matical demonstration.  On  page  429  jMr.  Guillet 
says  that  "Biology  teaches  us  that  it  is  the  over- 
specialized  species  that  have  always  succumbed  in  the 
struggle.  ]\[an  owes  his  preeminence  to  the  fact  that 
he  is  born  an  immature  and  generalized  form  and 
long  retains  this  condition  of  plasticity."  The  other 
statement  (on  page  433)  is  that  "Every  part  of  the 
living  body  is  also  in  effect  part  of  the  soul,  and  the 
atrophy  of  any  part  of  the  body  involves  the  partial 
paralysis  of  the  soul." 

III.  It  is  of  great  significance  in  education  that  the 
study  of  human  beings  at  different  stages  of  de- 
velopment has  made  evident  not  only  that  (a) 
individuals  differ  greatly  in  various  psychic 
and  physical  particulars  and  capacities,  but  that 


8  THE    KEOECJANIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

(h)  the  same  individual  differs  greatly  at  dif- 
ferent stages  of  natural  development,  and  that 
(c)  notwithstanding  the  individual  peculiarities 
there  is  a  general  likeness  in  the  mental  and 
bodily  powers  of  all  normal  members  of  the 
same  race  at  corresponding  stages  of  develop- 
ment, and  that,  finally,  tJie?'e  are  at  least 
three  fairly  ivell  marked  stages  of  ysyclio- 
physical  development  falling  ivitJiin  the  com- 
monly recognized  periods  of  systematic  school 
education,  separated  hy  two  transition  periods, 
which  stages  of  development  are  so  distinct  as 
to  suggest  that  they  should  he  made  the  bases 
of  the  organization  and  grading  of  our  school 
system. 
These  stages  of  psycho-phvsical  development  are : — 

A.  The  period  of  quite  rapid  growth  prior  to  the 
"second  dentition"  and  the  approximate  com- 
pletion of  the  growth  of  the  brain  in  bulk — 
which  might  be  designated  as  the  period  of 
childhood  proper, 

a.  The  transition  period  of  retarded  growth  and 
comparative  delicacy,  at  the  time  of  the 
"second  dentition",  most  marked  generally 
in  American  children  about  the  eighth  year. 

B.  The  period  of  slow  but  steady  growth,  follow- 
ing the  establishment  of  a  new  equilibrium 
after  the  completion  of  the  transition  period 
just  mentioned,  and  lasting  until  puberty. 
Thia  appears  to  be  a  period  especially  favor- 


THE    EEORGAlSriZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  9 

able  to  the   establishment  of  useful  automa- 
tisms, and  might  be  designated  as  the  period 
of  boyhood  and  girlhood  proper. 
h.     The  critical  transition  period  of  pubescence, 
said  to  come  generally  in  the  United  States 
in  the  case  of  girls  about  the  fourteenth  year, 
and  in  the  case  of  boys  about  a  year  later. 
C.     The  period  of  adolescence  proper. 
Remarks:     It  would  perhaps  be  well  for  the  edu- 
cator to  regard  the  year  in  which  puberty  is  actually 
attained  and  the  year  or  two  immediately  following 
as  constituting  a  special  stage  of  development,  differ- 
ing considerably  from  that  of  later  adolescence,  as 
well  as  differing  radically  from  that  of  boyhood  or 
girlhood  preceding  it.     This  stage  is  unquestionably 
the  most  critical  stage  of  human  development  with 
which  the  teacher  has  to  deal. 

It  seems  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  no  one 
maintains  that  these  periods  are  marked  off  by  per- 
fectly sharp  lines ;  it  is  not  maintained,  for  example, 
that  the  general  state  of  mind  and  body  of  a  girl 
during  the  few  months  immediately  preceding  her 
first  menstrual  discharge  is  less  like  the  mental  and 
physical  state  of  the  same  girl  three  months  after  the 
first  catamenia  than  it  is  like  her  psycho-physical 
condition  on  her  tenth  birthday.  Nevertheless,  al- 
though the  boundaries  are  not  sharp,  the  stages  are 
fairly  distinct  and  of  great  significance ;  and  it  is 
well  to  notice  that  under  our  present  system  of  pub- 
lic school  organization  in  the  United  States  the  three 


10  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

stages  of  development  above  referred  to  as  (1) 
cliildhood  proper,  (2)  boyhood  and  girlhood  proper, 
and  (3)  adolescence,  correspond  roughly  to  the  pri- 
mary school,  the  ''grammar",  or  intermediate  school, 
and  the  high  school.  But  unfortunately  the  corre- 
spondence is  only  roughly  approximated,  and  to  say 
nothing  of  the  lack  of  any  clear  line  of  distinction  in 
method  between  the  instruction  in  the  kindergarten 
and  primary  school,  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  in  the 
upper,  or  "grammar  school''  grades,  on  the  other  (the 
division  in  fact  coming  rather  between  the  kinder- 
garten, where  there  is  one,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
primary  and  gi'ammar  grades  together,  on  the  other), 
it  is  a  patent  (and  I  think  a  very  unfortunate)  fact 
that  the  higher  grammar-school  grades  deal  chiefly 
with  adolescents, 

IV.     The  comparative  study  of  the  mental  and  phys- 
ical  development   of  men   and   of  sub-human 
animals,   of  races  and  of  individuals,  in  the 
light  of   the    doctrine   of  evolution,   has   sug- 
gested   certain    interesting    truths    as    to    the 
meanings  of  mental  and  physical  phenomena, 
which  it  is  foolish  to  ignore,  even  though  it  be 
granted  that  these  suggested  probabilities  have 
not  yet  been  demonstrated  to  be  true. 
RemarJcs:     It  is   not  only  unwise  to  ignore  the 
possibility  that  there  may  be  great  significance  in 
some  of  the   correspondences   hetvjeen   the  develop- 
ment of  the  race  and  that  of  the  individual,  but  it  is 
silly  to  assume  (as  has  been  assumed  by  one  or  more 


THE    KEORGANIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  11 

writers)  that  if  these  correspondences  be  significant 
it  is  incumbent  upon  us  to  read  them  in  only  one 
way,  and  to  interpret  the  development  of  the  race 
in  the  light  of  that  of  the  individual,  but  not  the  de- 
velopment of  the  individual  in  the  light  of  that  of 
the  race.  If  the  correspondences  are  significant,  we 
can  not  only  learn  something  as  to  the  development 
of  the  race  from  that  of  the  individual,  but  also 
something  as  to  the  development  of  the  individual 
from  our  (admittedly  imperfect)  knowledge  of  the 
development  of  the  race.  Even  though  an  enthusias- 
tic student  of  genetic  psychology  may  sometimes  ask 
us  to  go  W'itli  him  a  little  too  fast  and  too  far,  tee 
must,  nevertheless,  if  we  are  open-minded  seekers 
for  light,  reckon  with  genetic  psycliology  in  looking 
for  solutions  of  educational  problems.  Although  the 
"recapitulation"  theory*  may  be  unproven  and  the 
"culture  epoch"  theoryf  may  have  been  assumed 
with  too  much  definiteness  by  some  enthusiasts,  and 
although  the  existence  of  "nascent  stages" t  may  be 
less  satisfactorily  established  than  the  law  of  gravity, 
yet  the  educator  that  ignores  these  theories  is  turn- 
ing his  back  upon  a  possible  (to  speak  very  conserv- 
atively) source  of  light,  and  in  doing  so  is  unfaith- 
ful to  the  duty  his  vocation  lays  upon  him. 
V.  The  acceptance  of  postulates  III  and  IV  docs 
not  at  all  require  the  educator  to  follow  slavis^hlv 

*  See  Cephas  Giiillet  on  "Recapitulation  and  Education"  in 
the   Pedag-oarical   Seminary,   vol.   VII. 

tSee  the  writiners  of  the  American  Herhartians  penerallv,  sucb 
as   De    Garmo's    "Herbart    and    the    Herba.rtlans"    (Scribners) 

t  See  the  WTltlngs  of  Dr.  G.  Stanley  Hall. 


12  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

the   tastes,   inclinations   and    impulses   showing 
themselves  in  the  child  at  a  given  stage  of  de- 
velopment, but  it  does  require  that  the  educa- 
tor should  carefully  study  these  tendencies,  in 
order  to  avail  himself  of  the  light  thus  gained 
to  take  the  line  of  least  resistence  in  assisting 
the  child  to  such  a  development  of  the  potential- 
ities of  his  nature  as  shall  make  possible  for  him 
a  large,  rich,  beautiful,  serviceable  and  happy 
life ;  that  is  to  say,  in  order  to  give  the  child 
such  an   education   as    shall   enable  him  to   so 
far  harmonize  his  life  with  things  as  they  are, 
physical  and  social,  as  to  be  capable  of  advan- 
cing freely,  along  the  line  of  development  sug- 
gested by  his  individual  genius,  into  the  largest 
life  possible  for  a  being  having  the  endowments 
of  humanity. 
RemarJis:  This  means  that  the  possibly  cruel  and 
savage  impulses  of  a  child  at  a  given  stage  of  devel- 
opment, while  they  should  not  be  encouraged,*  are 
yet  to  be  considered  by  those  whose   duty  it  is  to 
giiide  the  child's  development;  these  and  all  other 
instincts  and  natural  inclinations  of  the  child  being 
itsed    in    his    education,    sometimes    as    suggesting 
methods    of    approach    to    valuable    knowledge    and 

*  Calling  to  mind  President  G.  Stanley  Hall's  well  known  tad- 
pole illustration,  it  may  be  suggested  that  biology  has  taught 
us  in  the  case  of  certain  batrachians  that  where  the  condi- 
tions are  too  favorable  to  the  exercise  of  the  organs  adapted 
to  the  creature's  early,  water-inhabiting  stage  of  development, 
it  may  never  fully  mature  into  the  land-living  stage  of  develop- 
ment characteristic  of  the  genus  to  which  it  belongs,  but  may- 
carry  gills  to  the  day  of  its  death. 


THE    EEOEGANIZATIO>"^    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  13 

achievement,  at  other  times  as  affording  points  of 
departure  for  training  in  self-control,  balance  and 
poise  of  life. 

The  work  of  the  teacher  is  perhaps  best  indicated 
by  the  term  guidance.  While  the  teacher's  fnnction, 
most  assnredly,  is  not  to  drive  the  pupils  along  a 
beaten  educational  highway,  and  probably  it  would 
be  a  mistake  to  conceive  of  the  function  of  the  teach- 
er even  as  that  of  one  who  should  lead  the  young  to 
follow  in  his  own  footsteps,  yet  the  teacher's  business 
is  to  GUIDE,  to  accompany  the  young  in  their  voyages 
of  discovery  into  the  by  them  as  yet  unexplored  uni- 
verse which  lies  all  about  them,  to  give  them  the 
benefit  of  his  previous  partial  exploration  of  that 
which  is  to  them  wholly  ten^a  incognita,  and  to  point 
out  to  them  the  shortest  path  to  those  points  of  van- 
tage giving  broad  vistas  from  which  the  young  ex- 
])lorer  can  most  intelligently  plan  his  ova\  future 
excursions. 

It  might  naturally  be  supposed  that  the  scion  of 
the  most  highly  evolved  genus  of  living  beings  of 
which  we  have  any  knowledge,  the  marvelous  com- 
plexity of  whose  organism  surpasses  the  most  won- 
derful miracle  of  which  the  poetic  imagination  of 
man  has  ever  conceived,  would  be  provided  at  birth 
with  a  nervous  system  so  moulded  by  the  experiences 
of  the  stock  from  which  his  life  buds  forth,  that  the 
successive  instincts  that  find  expression  as  his  life 
develops  to  maturity  would  of  themselves  go  far  to 
make  his  life  a  satisfactorv  one,  even  in  the  absence 


14  THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

of  any  consciously  directed  education  on  the  part  of 
his  elders.  But  we  should  remember  that  in  the 
economy  of  nature  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  j)aren- 
ial  instincts  of  the  adult  may  be  substituted  for  in- 
stincts of  self-direction  in  a  being  whose  infancy  is 
to  be  long  continued ;  so  that,  freed  from  the  care 
and  strain  of  self-preservation  and  self -protection, 
the  immature  being  may  long  retain  that  high  de- 
gree of  plasticity  and  educability  through  which 
alone  it  can  gain  the  benefit  of  the  many  and  impor- 
tant new  experiences  of  different  individual  mem- 
bers of  the  highly  evolved  and  very  delicately  and 
complexly  organized  race  to  which  it  belongs — ex- 
periences that  may  have  been  too  recently  gained 
and  too  rapidly  accumulated  to  have  made  a  defi- 
nitely heritable  impress  upon  the  nervous  system. 
In  the  light  of  this  reflection  it  would  seem  that  to 
leave  the  child  to  be  wholly  guided  by  his  own  indi- 
vidual instincts  would  be  to  force  what  from  the  stand- 
point of  civilization  must  be  regarded  as  a  precocious 
maturity  upon  him,  and  thus  to  deprive  him  of  the 
present  enjoyment  and  future  benefit  of  the  pro- 
longed youth  for  which  nature  has  made  such  ample 
provision,  the  result  of  which  deprivation  must  be  a 
stunted  human  product,  whose  psychic  growth 
would  be  greatly  diminished,  if  not  wholly  arrested 
on  a  low  plane  of  development.  In  such  a  mistaken 
application  of  the  idea  of  loyalty  to  nature,  in  thus 
trusting  the  child's  development  wholly  to  his  own 
instincts  at  every  stage  of  development,  we  should 


Till-:    iJKOilGANIZATIOX    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  15 

really  be  ac'tin<>;  in  disre£2:ard  of  and  in  opposition  to 
the  method  of  nature,  which  has  made  large  pro- 
vision for  the  development  of  humanity  through  the 
■parental  instinct  of  (juidance  and  by  means  of  the 
power  of  mental  abstraction  that  mankind  has  ac- 
quired, which  makes  it  possible  to  conmiunicate  a 
great  part  of  the  results  of  recent  individual  human 
experiences  to  those  who  have  not  themselves  had 
these  particular  ex]:)eriences,  who  may  never  have 
them,  but  who  may  nevertheless  be  benefitted  by  the 
knowledge  that  has  been  gained  through  them.  We 
too  often  forget  that  civilization  is  itself  a  natural 
product  of  human  development,  although  one  com- 
municable rather  by  tradition,  by  education,  than  by 
inheritance. 

An  admirable  illustration  of  the  pedagogical  value 
of  the  instincts  and  inclinations  in  the  child  that 
appear  to  repeat  those  of  an  earlier  stage  of  adult 
human  development,  is  offered  by  the  use  that  may 
be  made  of  this  similarity  between  the  development 
of  the  race  and  of  the  individual,  to  teach  the  child, 
(almost  unconsciously  to  himself,  but  in  the  most 
real  and  vital  and  convincing  manner)  the  history 
of  the  development  of  the  human  race  to  its  present 
stage  of  culture,  by  presenting  to  the  child,  by  de- 
scription and  illustration,  the  successive  stages  of 
the  development  of  the  human  race  towards  its  pres- 
ent grade  of  civilization,  at  those  stages  of  his  ovnx 
individual  development  from  infancy  to  maturity, 
at  which  he  is  best  fitted  to  sympathize  with,  imitate. 


16  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

and  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  several  grades  of 
social  development  portrayed.  Much  can  be  done 
in  this  way;  and  the  youth  who  has  thus  learned 
history,  who  has  thus  learned  step  by  step,  at  the 
right  time,  in  such  a  way  as  to  feel  the  naturalness 
of  it,  the  genesis  of  our  present  culture — of  our  in- 
stitutions and  ideas,  our  material  and  mental  devel- 
opment— has  a  vital  knowledge  of  history  which  many 
a  professor  might  envy,  a  knowledge  that  has  the 
great  practical  value  of  protecting  him  from  the 
extravagance  and  inconsiderate  impatience  of  the 
Utopian  idealist  and  the  revolutionary  reformer,  and 
of  leading  him  to  be  at  the  same  time  and  in  the 
best  sense  conservative  and  progressive,  saving  him 
at  once  from  the  despair  and  cynicism  of  the  pessi- 
mist, and  from  the  blind  fatuity  of  the  optimist, 
and  giving  him  instead  the  poise  and  sanity  of  the 
hopeful,  thoughtful  and  energetic  meliorist. 
VI.  In  education  the  policy  of  the  open  door  should 
be  maintained  as  far  as  possible. 
Remarks:  This  requires  not  alone  that  we  should 
(\o  all  that  we  can  to  have  the  young  person's  life 
rich  and  beautiful  at  any  given  stage  of  develop- 
ment, but  that  we  should  so  do  this  as  to  keep  the 
possibility  open  for  him  to  proceed  to  the  highest 
round  of  the  educational  ladder  with  the  least  loss 
of  time  and  effort,  in  case  he  should  later  be  able  to 
carry  his  systematic  education  farther  than  may  at 
an  early  stage  seem  probable;  that  his  education 
shall  be  so  carefully  and  broadly  planned  that  what 


THE    REOKGAXIZATIOX    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  17 

he  learns  at  any  early  stage  of  his  development, 
whether  in  adolescence,  boyhood,  or  childhood,  shall 
not  shut  him  np  to  just  one  line  of  development  in 
the  future. 

VII.     The  hest  education  that  can  possibly  be  af- 
forded, is  the  most  economical,  both  for  the 
community  at  large  that  provides  it  for  its 
rising    generation    and    for    the    individual 
families  that  offer  it  to  their  children. 
Beinarls:  All    the    investigations  of    economists, 
publicists  and  statesmen  point  to  the  fact  that  the 
richest  and  most  productive  communities  are  those 
in  which  the  people,  the  workers,  are  most  intelli- 
gent and  efficient, — that  is,  best  educated  (although 
not  necessarily  most  schooled,  or  book  learned).  So 
that,  even  from  the  standpoint  of  tlie  community  or 
of  the  family  that  desires  nothing  higher  than  that 
its  memhcrs  shall  he  most  largely  possessed  of  the 
material  goods  of  life,  the  development  and  improve- 
ment of  education  should  he  the  chief  interest. 

This  would  be  true  even  if  the  life  were  not  more 
than  meat,  and  the  body  than  raiment,  even  if  the 
best  education  (in  the  true  sense)  were  not  of  su- 
preme value  from  the  standpoint  of  ability  to  live 
a  large,  rich,  beautiful  human  life,- — to  enable  our 
young  people  to  enter  into  their  inheritance  as  the 
heirs  of  the  ages  and  to  enjoy  the  richness  and 
beauty  of  this  wonderful  universe  that  is  so  largely 
a  closed  book  to  the  narrow  minds  and  undeveloped 
physical  natures  of  the  uneducated. 


18  THE    KEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

VIII.  Now  is  (always)  the  time  for  practical  re- 
form in  the  school  (as  everywhere  else). 
Remarks:  There  is  no  more  insidious  fallacy — ■ 
nothing  so  perfectly  calculated  to  paralyze  practical 
w^ork  for  the  amelioration  of  human  institutions — 
than  the  notion  that  our  present  business  is  simply 
to  gather  facts  and  submit  hypotheses  to  laboratory 
tests,  until  we  shall  have  a  fairly  complete  body  of 
scientifically  established  knowledge  upon  which  to 
base  practical  action.  Our  knowledge  will  never  be 
complete — at  least  until  the  need  for  the  amelio- 
ration of  human  conditions  shall  have  passed  away ! 
— and  it  is  always  our  duty  to  apply  with  the  one 
hand  the  little  insight  that  we  have  already  gained, 
while  with  the  other  hand  we  are  reaching  out 
toward  larger  knowledge.  Experience  would  seem 
to  suggest  that  the  greater  our  achievements  in  sci- 
ence, the  more  we  shall  be  impressed  by  our  igiio- 
rance,  the  vaster  our  conception  of  the  unknown  ly- 
ing before  us,  and  hence  the  less  ready  we  shall  be  to 
regard  our  knowledge  as  fairly  complete.  If  we 
were  to  wait  for  that  consummation,  we  should  never 
take  the  first  step  toward  improving  the  practical 
conditions  of  life. 


PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIOiJ^S. 
I. 

As  to  the  General  Plan  of  Organizing  the  Schools. 

Section  1.  The  practical  recognition  of  the  pos- 
tulates hereinbefore  set  forth  and  the  realization  of 
the  truth  contained  in  them  may  best  be  attained,  I 
believe,  by  such  a  flexible  organization  of  the  school 
system  as  is  indicated  below,  in  which  the  psycho- 
physical stages  of  development  above  referred  to 
shall  be  taken  as  the  bases  of  classification  and  grad- 
ing, in  which  there  shall  be  ample  opportunity  for 
readjustment,  and  in  which  there  shall  be  much  in- 
dividual instruction  without  foregoing  the  benefiis 
of  class  work. 

Each  school  period  corresponding  to  the  stages  of 
psycho-physical  development  mentioned  above  should 
be  treated  as  one  continuous  class  (whether  lasting 
one  year  or  four),  in  which  class  the  core  of  the 
work  should  consist  of  a  minimum  curriculum  for 
all,  such  as  can  be  followed  by  the  slowest  and  dull- 
est pupil  that  is  not  so  far  below  the  normal  plane 
as  to  require  education  in  a  special  school  for  de- 
fectives. Furthermore,  in  planning  the  school  work, 
provision  should  be  made  for  the  pursuit  by  every 
child  of  some  special,  individual  interest  not  em- 
braced in  the  prescribed  curriculum — such  as  learn- 
ing to  play  upon  a  musical  instrument,  cultivating  a 
special  talent  for  drawing  or  painting,  learning  a 
foreign  language  not  provided   for  in  the  curricu- 


20  THE    KEOKGANIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

lum,  etc.*  In  addition  to  this  the  plan  of  daily 
work  must  be  so  flexible  that  the  children  having 
special  aptitudes  in  any  one,  in  several,  or  in  all 
directions  can  be  given  extra  work  therein.  More 
diflficult  problems  or  a  greater  number  of  problems 
illustrating  the  principles  of  which  the  whole  class 
is  endeavoring  to  gain  a  working  knowledge,  may 
be  given  to  those  showing  mathematical  talent ;  more 
elaborate  or  a  greater  number  of  observations  and 
reports  in  nature  study  may  be  called  for  from  those 
whose  ability  lies  in  this  direction ;  while  in  the  case 
of  others  the  surplus  ability  and  energy  may  find 
its  natural  outlet  in  more  reading  along  certain  lines, 
in  more  elegant  or  in  a  greater  number  of  manual 
achievements,  etc.  Further  than  this,  the  ability 
and  energy  of  the  more  fortunately  endowed  chil- 
dren, wherever  practicable  (and  that  it  is  generally 
])racticable  many  teachers  have  testified),  should  be 
employed  to  some  extent  in  helping  their  less  ad- 
vanced classmates.  This  is  desirable  not  alone  for 
the  moral  culture  incidental  to  this  kind  of  co-opera- 
tion, nor  merely  because  a  child  can  sometimes  learn 
l)etter  from  his  fellows  a  little  in  advance  of  him 
than  from  adults,  but  also  because  we  learn  so  much 
by  teaching,  that,  aside  from  the  moral  benefit  com- 
ing to  the  child  teacher  from  this  cultivation  of  the 
spirit  of  helpfulness,  his  measure  of  mastery  of  the 

*  One  of  the  most  serious  defects  in  the  present  organization 
of  education  is  that  it  condemns  the  especially  talented  either 
to  forego  the  proper  early  cultivation  of  their  talent  or  else  to 
rive  up  such  a  general  education  as  all  men  and  women  need 
in  order  to  enable  them  to  live  large,  useful,  happy,  human  lives. 


THE    EEOKGAIflZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  21 

special  kind  of  work  in  which  he  excels  his  fellows 
will  usually  be  much  increased  by  this  kind  of  exer- 
cise of  his  powers.  But  however  else  provision 
should  be  made  for  meeting  the  needs  of  the  brighter 
members  of  the  class,  a  part  of  their  surplus  energy 
and  quickness  to  learn  should  be  taken  advantage  of 
to  give  them  more  leisure  for  healthful,  out-of-door 
exercise  and  recreation,  lest  they  suffer  from  some 
of  the  forms  of  ill  health,  especially  nervous  dis- 
orders, to  which  the  child  of  precocious  mental  de- 
velopment  so   often   falls   victim. 

It  is  evident  that  the  kind  of  procedure  here  pro- 
posed, in  the  conduct  of  the  school,  involves  a  large 
amount  of  individual  work,  but  the  mistake  must 
not  be  made  of  supposing  that  it  would  favor  the 
abolition  of  class  work.  Far  from  it.  A  large  part 
of  the  work  of  the  school  would  be  class  work;  not 
only  would  much  of  the  original  exposition  and  later 
explanation  by  the  teacher  be  given  to  the  class  as  a 
whole,  but  much  of  the  "recitation",  or  response  of 
the  pupils,  would  be  given  to  the  class  as  a  whole  or 
to  a  large  group  thereof.  Indeed,  the  experience  of 
those  who  have  worked  along  the  lines  indicated 
seems  to  confirm  what  might  naturally  be  expected — 
that  the  attention  of  the  other  members  of  the  class, 
and  the  liveliness  and  excellence  of  the  contribution 
of  the  individual  pupil  will  be  all  the  gTeater  if,  for 
example,  the  latter  has  been  observing  or  doing  some- 
thing in  nature  study  with  which  his  classmates  are 
not  equally  familiar,  or  if  he  is  readinc;  somethine: 


22  THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUB    SCHOOLS 

which  the  whole  class  has  not  been  engaged  in  read- 
ing for  a  length  of  time  determined  by  the  size  of  the 
class  and  the  slowness  of  the  poorest  reader  it  may 
contain ! 

Section  2.  As  large  classes  could  be  successfully 
conducted  by  a  single  teacher  under  the  plan  pro- 
posed as  could  be  successfully  conducted  by  a  single 
teacher  under  any  existing  system.  Under  this  sys- 
tem there  would  naturally  be  considerable  group 
work  within  the  class ;  but  these  groups  would  be 
flexible  and  constantly  changing,  and  the  child  would 
not  be  working  with  group  A  in  reading,  although 
unskillful  in  that  kind  of  activity,  just  because  he 
might  happen  to  be  quick  at  figures  and  expert  in 
manual  work ;  the  group  would  not  be  fixed  for  the 
term  or  for  just  so  many  weeks  upon  the  b'asis  of  the 
child's  apparent  brightness  or  backwardness  in  gen- 
eral, but  groups  would  form  themselves,  as  it  were, 
in  every  hind  of  scJiool  occupation,  in  accordance 
with  what  the  different  children  might  be  doing  in 
the  several  lines  of  school  activity.  One  of  the  great- 
est benefits  of  this  would  be  that  the  children  would 
not  be  prejudiced,  and  their  self-confidence  unduly 
discouraged  or  encouraged,  as  the  case  might  be,  by 
an  artificial  estimate  of  their  rank  among  their  fel- 
lows; but  greater  mutual  respect,  a  healthier  self- 
confidence,  and  therefore  more  pleasure  in  life  and 
greater  zest  and  success  for  eveiy  individual,  would 
arise  out  of  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  in  school 
children  do  not  necessarily  belong  in  one  of  the  two 


THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  23 

opposite  classes,  the  "bright"  and  the  "dull",  but  that 
child  A  may  be  able  to  do  this  thing  better  than  C 
and  D,  while  D  may  be  able  to  do  the  next  thing 
better  than  A  and  not  so  well  as  B,  and  so  on.* 

Although  it  would  doubtless  be  well,  under  any 
system,  to  have  small  classes,  containing  not  more 
than  two  dozen  children,  I  would  emphasize  the  fact 
that  this  system  would  lend  itself  quite  as  well  as 
any  other  to  economy  in  the  number  of  teachers,  for 
with  the  help  of  one  or  more  assistant  teachers  or 
normal  training  school  cadets  in  each  school,  who 
might  divide  their  time  between  several  different 
classes, — one  of  them  assisting  teacher  A  in  one 
room  the  first  part  of  the  forenoon,  and  working  in 
teacher  B's  class  in  another  room  later  in  the  day, — 
class  teachers  could  work  successfully  with  large 
classes,  and  thus  the  expense  for  teachers'  salaries 
need  not  be  great.  The  especial  function  of  the 
cadets  or  assistant  teachers  should  generally  be  to 
help  the  children  individually  or  in  small  groups ; 
and  the  class  teacher  might  well  assign  the  conduct 
of  the  extra  work  of  the  brighter  or  more  advanced 
pupils  to  the  assistant,  giving  her  own  especial  atten- 
tion more  largely  to  the  less  able  children,  because 

*  For  an  especially  interesting  account  of  successful  indi- 
vidual work  in  classes  of  average  size,  see  Mrs.  Adelia  R. 
Hornbrook's  "Laboratory  Method  of  Teaching  Mathematics  in 
Secondary  Schools",  American  Educational  Bulletin  No.  VI, 
American  Book  Co.,  1895.  See  also  the  lecture  and  bibliography 
on  "Individual  Instruction"  in  the  valuable  syllabus  of  Cornell 
Univer.sity  Course  of  Fi-iday  Lectures  on  High  School  M'ork  and 
Administration,  and  the  elaborate  presentation  of  the  results 
of  this  method  in  the  case  of  a  foreign  language  class  given 
in  Preston  W.   Search's  "Ideal  School"     (Appleton,  New  York). 


2-1  THE    REOKGANIZATIOX    OF    OUE    SCirOOLS 

to  help  bright  children  skill  in  teaching  is  relatively 
less  important  than  knowledge  of  the  subject  (in 
which  the  cadet,  fresh  from  her  studies,  is  generally 
not  much,  if  at  all,  inferior  to  the  experienced  teach- 
er), whereas  the  duller  children  need  all  the  peda- 
gogical skill  that  the  experienced  teacher  can  bring 
to  their  assistance.* 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  under  the  system 
herein  proposed,  in  which  the  same  class-teacher 
would  have  charge  of  a  class  throughout  the  whole 
of  a  given  school  period  corresponding  to  one  of  the 
stages  of  psycho-physical  development  referred  to  in 
Postulate  III,  the  number  of  classes  in  a  given 
school  could  most  readily,  and  in  a  manner  so  flex- 
ible as  to  be  almost  automatic,  be  adapted  to  the  siz3 
and  wealth  of  the  community.  While  a  comparative- 
ly small  community  might  not  have  more  than  three 
or  four  classes  in  its  elementary  department  (or 
school  of  boyhood  and  girlhood  proper),  starting  one 
each  year,  a  larger  community  with  its  correspond- 
ingly larger  school  fund,  might  start  classes  not  only 
semi-annually  but  quarterly,  bi-monthly,  or  even  of- 
tener,  so  that  any  child  in  this  stage  of  psycho- 
physical development  could,  at  any  time  throughout 
the  school  year,  find  some  class  that  ivould  he  almost 

*  For  a  discussion  of  the  economy  of  making:  use  of  assistant 
teacliers  to  work  in  the  same  room  with  tlie  teachers  of  large 
classes,  see  especially  the  syllabus  (with  bibliogi-aphy)  of  a  lec- 
ture by  Superintendent  Kennedy  of  Batav-ia.  N.  Y.,  given  on 
page  53  of  the  Cornell  University  Course  of  Friday  Lectures  on 
High  School  "Work  and  Administration;  and  see  also  Mr. 
Kennedy's  presentation  of  the  subject  on  page  295  of  the 
National  Educational  Association's  Preceedings   for   1901. 


THE    EEOKGAXIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  25 

perfecihj  adapted  to  his  exact  stage  of  advancement ; 
and  in  snch  large  schools,  while  it  wonld  doubtless 
generally  be  advisable  for  a  child  to  continue  in  the 
same  class,  under  the  same  teacher,  throughout  the 
whole  school  period  in  question  (a  period  roughly 
estimated  at  from  three  to  four  years  in  length  in 
the  case  of  the  elementary  department),  it  would  be 
possible  at  any  time  to  transfer  from  one  class  to  an- 
other a  child  whose  mental  and  physical  growth  was 
especially  rapid  or  especially  slow,  or  who  by  reason 
of  the  peculiarity  of  his  own  or  his  teacher's  dispo- 
sition, should  not  be  getting  on  well  in  the  class  in 
which  he  happened  at  the  time  to  be.  In  such  a  large 
school,  having  a  number  of  classes  started  at  nearly 
the  same  time  some  of  the  classes  might  be  proceed- 
ing quite  rapidly  while  others  were  progi-essing  very 
slowly,  the  teacher  of  class  A  might  be  able  to  get 
most  of  her  class  very  rapidly  over  the  ground  in  its 
study  of  elementary  mathematics  but  might  have  to 
go  very  slow  with  them  in  English,  while  class  B 
might  be  making  especially  rapid  progi'ess  in  Eng- 
lish but  be  slower  than  other  classes  in  mathematics 
or  in  the  acquisition  of  manual  dexterity.  It  would 
be  easy  under  such  conditions  to  transfer  pupils 
from  one  class  to  another  so  as  to  gi'oup  the  children 
in  such  a  manner  that  they  could  work  together  most 
successfully  and  harmoniously. 

Section  3.  While  the  matters  already  referred  to 
are  important,  the  greatest  benefit,  perhaps,  that 
would  come  from  the  adoption  of  the  proposed  sys- 


26  THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

tern  of  reorganizing  our  schools,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
change  it  would  make  in  the  relation  of  the  teacher 
to  her  work, — the  inspiring  freedom  it  would  give 
her  when  she  should  be  released  from  the  treadmill 
grind  of  a  machine  operative  engaged  upon  a  part  of 
a  part  of  something  with  the  ultimate  form  of  which 
she  has  nothing  to  do,  and  thus  deprived  of  the  stim- 
ulus and  reward  of  the  artist-worker,  who  has,  and 
must  have  if  he  or  she  is  to  continue  to  be  an  artist, 
the  satisfaction  of  carrying  a  piece  of  work  to  its  nat- 
ural completion.  No  longer  tryannized  over  by  the  ne- 
cessity of  bringing  every  class  and  the  whole  class — 
the  bright  and  the  dull,  the  sanguine  and  the  phleg- 
matic, those  favored  by  a  cultured  and  prosperous 
home  and  those  handicapped  by  a  home  environment 
of  poverty,  ignorance  and  indifference,  those  well 
and  those  ill  prepared — no  longer  kept  in  a  constant 
state  of  nervous  strain  by  the  necessity  of  bringing 
each  rapidly  succeeding  class,  as  a  whole,  to  a  pre- 
ordained point  in  the  curriculum  within  a  certain 
number  of  weeks  so  as  to  make  connection  with  an- 
other equally  short-lived  class  at  a  fixed  date  twelve, 
six  or  three  months  from  the  time  she  first  looks  her 
little  company  of  individuals  in  the  face,  the  teacher, 
transformed  from  a  factory-hand  into  one  whose 
work  is  dig-nified  and  rendered  interesting  by  the 
fact  that  it  covers  the  whole  of  a  natural  period  of 
child  life,  instead  of  an  arhitrary  section  of  such  a 
unit,  may  well  feel  the  inspiration  of  the  artist,  find- 
ing continual  delight  in  a  noble  work  freely  pursued. 


THE    REOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  3t 

She  conld  then  proceed  serenely  without  undue  haste, 
to  do  her  best  to  help  the  children  in  her  charge  to 
the  most  perfect  development  individually  possible 
for  each  one  of  them  within  the  psycho-physical 
period  of  development  constituting  her  field  of  work. 
Her  duty  would  no  longer  be  to  impart  to  all  of 
her  pupils,  regardless  of  their  various  idiosyncrasies, 
exactly  the  same  amount  of  information  in  just  so 
many  subjects,  and  to  train  them  all  to  exactly  the 
same  degree  of  proficiency  in  certain  prescribed  ac- 
tivities. But  whenever  any  individual  of  her  class 
should  appear  to  have  completed  the  period  of  psycho- 
physical development  to  which  her  department  of  the 
school  was  designed  to  minister,  it  would  be  her 
duty  (after  consultation  with  her  principal  and  with 
the  parents  of  the  young  person)  to  transfer  the  lat- 
ter to  the  next  department  of  the  school,  even  though 
the  estimated  time  for  the  completion  of  the  stage  of 
development  represented  by  her  o^vn  department  had 
not  elapsed  and  she  should  not  be  ready  to  pass  her 
class  as  a  whole  over  to  the  teacher  in  charge  of  the 
next  higher  department,  and  even  though  the  young 
person  in  question,  although  more  mature,  should 
not  be  more,  but  should  even  be  less  proficient  in  the 
work  of  this  department  of  tlie  school  than  most  of 
the  classmates  he  would  leave  behind  him.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  should  happen  that  the  develop- 
ment of  one  or  more  of  the  children  under  the  care 
of  an  elementary  department  teacher,  for  instance, 
should  be  so  much  more  backward  than  that  of  the 


28  THE    KEORGAXIZATIOX    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

average,  that  such  child  or  children  should  not  he 
mature  enough  to  go  on  with  the  rest  of  the  class, 
it  would  he  the  duty  of  the  teacher  of  this'  class,  A, 
let  us  say,  to  transfer  such  children  to  the  teacher  of 
class  B  of  the  same  department, — not  necessarily  to 
remain  in  class  B  until  the  B  teacher  should  pro- 
mote her  class  as  a  whole  to  the  secondary  transition 
department  and  start  again  with  a  class  of  young- 
sters coming  from  the  primary  transition  depart- 
ment, but  each  one  of  these  children  should  remain 
until  the  teacher  and  the  supervising  authority 
should  feel  satisfied  that  he  was  mentally  and  phys- 
ically mature  enough  to  enter  upon  the  next  stage  of 
school  life.  When  her  pupils  should  have  about 
reached  the  completion  of  the  stage  of  boyhood  and 
girlhood  proper,  as  contradistinguished  from  the 
stage  of  pubescence,  the  elementary  department 
teacher's  work  with  her  class  would  be  done,  and  she 
would  pass  the  young  people  on  to  the  teachers  of  the 
secondary  transition  department,  regardless  of 
whether  each  and  all  of  them  could  tell  the  year  and 
day  of  the  battle  of  Antietam,  could  work  so  many 
problems  in  percentage  in  so  many  minutes,  could 
extract  the  cube  root  of  a  number,  or  even  whether 
one  or  more  of  them  were  deficient  in  some  pretty 
simple  matter  that  the  normal  child  might  well  be 
expected  to  master  in  the  elementary  department. 

The  teacher's  duty  would  be  discharged  when  she 
had  done  her  best  for  each  child  under  her  care ;  uni- 
formity of  result  would  not  be  required,  she  would 


THE    EEOKGAXIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  29 

be  judged  in  a  large  "way,  not  by  minute  tests.  The 
supervising  officer  would  visit  her  class  from  time  to 
time  (not  at  fixed  periods),  would  observe  her  work, 
and  would  find  out  how  the  children  were  getting 
on  under  her  care;  the  supervisor  would  also  know 
what  was  being  done  in  the  other  classes,  and  how 
well,  on  the  average,  the  children  trained  by  the 
teacher  under  consideration  were  conducting  them- 
selves and  doing  their  work  in  the  next  stage  of 
school  life.  Further  than  this,  records  of  the  char- 
acteristics, the  physical  and  mental  peculiarities  of 
each  child  would  be  kept  throughout  its  school  life. 
With  such  means  at  hand  for  estimating  the  value  of 
a  teacher's  work,  she  could  under  the  proposed  plan 
be  given  a  very  large  freedom  to  reach  results  in  her 
own  way.  She  could  vary  the  usual  daily  program 
by  taking  the  children  into  the  fields  or  woods  in 
order  to  study  nature,  or  to  visit  some  industrial 
establishment  in  order  to  become  acquainted  with 
manual  and  mechanical  processes  and  some  business 
methods,  whenever  it  might  seem  wise  for  her  to  do 
so.  Supervising  officers,  courses  of  study,  text  books, 
school  programs — all  these  would  still  be  at  hand  to 
help  the  teacher  in  her  work,  but  she  would  no 
longer  be  in  bondage  to  them. 

Last,  but  by  no  means  least,  in  this  connection  let 
it  be  emphasized  that  under  the  organization  of  the 
schools  proposed  it  would  not  only  be  possible  for  the 
teacher  to  learn  to  know  her  children  well,  to  know 
each  member  of  her  class  throughout  n  fairlv  Ions: 


30  THE    EEORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

period,*  one  of  the  most  natural  results  of  which 
would  be  to  develop  a  strong  sympathy  between  teach- 
ers and  pupils  (for,  as  Henry  Ware  has  very  beauti- 
fully said  in  his  novel  "Zenobia",  to  love  each  other 
we  chiefly  need  to  know  each  other,  it  is  ignorance 
that  begets  suspicion  and  dislike),  but,  as  a  result 
of  this  full  knowledge  of  a  large  number  of  young 
persons  during  the  wliole  of  a  natural  period  of 
psycho-physical  development,  the  teacher  would  come 
to  understand  this  stage  of  human  development  as  no 
teacher  can  be  expected  to  understand  any  stage  of 
development  under  our  present  system  of  grading. 

In  a  word,  the  teacher  would  be  enabled  to  do  a 
large  work  in  a  large  way.  The  educational  factory 
operative  of  today,  always  under  a  nervous  strain  to 
complete  a  stint  (and  an  impossible  one!)  within  a 
fixed  time,  could  then  (and  I  believe  that  in  most 
cases  she  would  then)  become  a  joyous  artist,  en- 
gaged in  one  of  the  most  begjitiful  and  fascinating, 
as  well  as  one  of  the  noblest  occupations  that  life  af- 
fords. 

Section  4.     Turning  now  from  the  teacher  to  the 


*  Many  schools  have  come  to  appreciate  the  importance  ol 
this,  and  in  tlie  German  gymnasium  it  is  customary  for  the 
ordinarius  (the  teacher  who  gives  instruction  to  the  class  in  at 
least  one  of  its  principal  studies  and  who  is  especially  in  charge 
of  it  as  a  class  teacher,  although  under  the  departmental  system 
even  the  lowest  class  has  several  teachers)  of  the  lowest  class 
(sexta),  composed  of  boys  of  nine  or  ten,  to  continue  as  ordi- 
narius and  principal  instructor  of  this  group  of  taoys  while  they 
are  passing  through  the  next  two  annual  classes  (quinta  and 
quarta).  That  is  to  say.  there  will  be  in  the  gymnasium  three 
teachers,  every  one  of  whom  in  turn  will  take  charge  of  the 
lowest  class  and  carry  the  group  of  boys  through  the  first  three 
years  of  the  gymnasium. 


THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  31 

pupil,  it  is  to  be  said  that  one  of  the  chief  reasons 
for  proposing  the  plan  under  consideration  is,  that 
in  the  case  of  a  dull  child,  whose  interest  his  teacher 
has  been  unable  to  awaken  sufficiently  to  lead  him  to 
a  mastery  of  the  subject  of  instruction,  it  is  an  in- 
jury, rather  than  a  benefit,  to  keep  him  droning  over 
the  same  subject-matter  twice  the  normal  length  of 
time.  If  the  child's  failure  to  make  the  minimum  of 
normal  progress  is  due  to  some  temporary  cause,  as 
illness,  a  protracted  absence,  or  the  like,  it  will  ordi- 
narily no  doubt  be  advisable  to  transfer  him  (not  at 
the  expiration  of  some  arbitrarily  fixed  period  for  the 
continuation  of  a  class,  but  at  once)  to  a  class  which 
is  not  so  far  advanced  as  that  with  which  he  had  pre- 
viously been  working ;  but  if  the  failure  to  make  nor- 
mal progress  is  due  to  a  more  permanent  condition, 
— to  general  mental  incapacity  (not  sufficient  to  in- 
dicate that  he  should  be  in  a  special  school  for  the 
feeble-minded,  and  not  the  result  of  some  particular 
sense  defect  or  other  cause  that  can  be  determined 
and  given  special  treatment),  to  mental  lethargy,  to 
a  lack  of  interest  in  school  matters,  even  to  continu- 
ous irregularity  of  attendance  or  chronic  ill  health, 
— the  child  (if  not  removed  from  the  common  school, 
for  the  benefit  of  his  physical,  mental  and  moral 
health)  should  be  kept  moving  forward,  at  a  slow 
pace,  it  may  be,  but  at  a  pace  no  slower  than  the 
general  rate  of  his  psycho-physical  development,  and 
in  association  with  children  whose  stage  of  psycho- 
physical development  corresponds  in  a  general  way 


32        THE  ee6kc4axization  of  oue  schools 

with  his  own.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  will  never  be 
found  wholesome  to  try  the  plan  of  having  him  go 
over,  with  a  different  teacher  and  a  younger  set  of 
children,  a  part  of  the  work  he  has  previously  been 
over.  These  changed  conditions  may  occasionally  af- 
ford the  needed  stimulus  and  help  the  child  to  better 
results — the  change  of  teacher  may  be  especially  help- 
ful. But  to  repeat  this  process  again  and  again,  and 
insist  that  he  shall  make  a  certain,  fixed,  minimal 
response  to  definite  tests  of  attainment  before  being 
allowed  to  advance,  and  thus  make  it  impossible  for 
him  to  get  out  of  the  primary  department  before  he  is 
twelve  years  old,  or  to  leave  the  elementary  depart- 
ment until  he  is  an  adolescent  of  sixteen  or  more — 
this  is  a  futile  waste  of  the  child's  time,  is  almost 
certain  to  have  a  pernicious  effect  upon  his  moral 
and  mental,  and  even  upon  his  physical  development, 
and  is  likely  to  make  him  a  failure  in  life  from  every 
point  of  view.  When  it  has  become  apparent  that  he 
will  not  keep  pace  with  any  group  of  pupils,  what 
benefit  is  to  come  from  demoting  him  from  that 
group  with  which  his  general  development  most 
nearly  corresponds,  putting  him  into  a  strange  envi- 
ronment, and  disheartening  him  by  associating  him 
with  younger  pupils  into  whose  company  he  comes 
under  the  disadvantage,  not  alone  of  being  a  stranger 
and  in  a  different  stage  of  development,  but  of  being 
one  who  is  known  to  have  failed  to  hold  his  ovsm  with 
his  previous  associates !  Let  us  have  common  sense 
enouo-h  to  reco2:nize  that  there  is  a  considerable  num- 


THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  33 

ber  of  children  who  are  not  likely  to  get  a  great 
amount  of  benefit  from  any  kind  of  systematic,  in- 
tellectual training.  In  such  cases,  so  long  as  they 
are  in  the  stages  of  childhood  and  boyhood  and  girl- 
hood proper  (as  distinguished  from  adolescence),  let 
the  school  do  what  it  can  for  them ;  let  them  advance 
through  the  school  with  their  fellows  and  get  what 
they  can  absorb  from  the  school  atmosphere  and  the 
class  work  as  they  go  along.  They  may  then,  and 
very  probably  will,  find  something  in  some  part  of  the 
curriculum  to  which  they  will  respond  with  some 
zest  and  success.  But  whether  they  do  so  or  not, 
let  them  leave  the  elementary  school  as  soon  as  they 
have  passed  beyond  the  stage  of  boyhood  and  girl- 
hood proper,  the  prepubescent  stage ;  and  if  nothing 
can  be  done  to  make  good  in  the  secondary  transi- 
tion department  their  previous  deficiencies,  and  if 
nothing  in  the  school  for  adolescents  seems  to  call 
forth  any  response  in  them,  let  them  leave  school  and 
go  to  work  after  a  year  or  so  in  the  special  transition 
class  for  those  who  are  passing  from  boyhood  or  girl- 
hood into  adolescence.  Let  them  at  least,  at  each 
stage  in  their  development,  have  the  chance  for  edu- 
cation (in  the  large  sense  of  that  term)  that  is  given 
by  a  suitable  environment  for  the  given  stage  of  de- 
velopment, instead  of  holding  them  prisoners  in  an 
outgro^^^l  environment  designed  for  those  at  a  lower 
stage  of  maturity.  Some  day,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
school  authorities  will  understand  that  it  is  the  busi- 
ness of  the  school  as  a  social  institution  to  afford  the 


34  THE    EEOKGANIZATIOiSr    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

most  favorable  opportunities  for  the  development  of 
the  young  person,  hut  that  it  is  not  its  business  to 
insist  upon  making  him  master  of  a  certain  definite 
quantum  of  fact  and  facility. 

The  failure  to  recognize  the  importance  of  adapt- 
ing the  school  work  to  the  stage  of  the  pupil's  general 
development,  which  has  made  the  school  a  place  of 
torment,  often  a  place  of  hopeless  discouragement 
to  so  many  pupils  in  the  past,  has  another  side  than 
that  referred  to  in  the  last  paragraph,  I  refer  to 
the  grave  injury  that  come^.from  allowing  mentally 
precocious  children  to  go  as  fast  as  their  mental 
power,  and  especially  their  mental  acquisitiveness, 
may  render  possible,  regardless  of  their  physical  de- 
velopment. The  only  safe  method  is  to  plan  the  cur- 
riculum with  reference  to  the  general  development 
of  the  being  to  be  educated;  and  in  case  the  mental 
development,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  general  phys- 
ical development  on  the  other,  seem  to  correspond 
ill,*  let  the  general  physical  development  be  given 
first  consideration.  This  method  of  procedure,  un- 
fortunately, has  not  yet  gained  the  approval  it  de- 
serves, although  it  is  long  since  it  was  first  suggested. 
In  answer  to  the  suggestion  made  by  Superintendent 
Harrington,  of  JSTew  Bedford,  in  18T4,  that  instead 
of  keeping  dull  children  a  great  length  of  time  on  an 


*  A  case  that  is  always  exceptional,  although  every  teacher  of 
large  experience  has  probably  known  some  young  person  or  per- 
sons in  whom  the  divergence  was  sufficient  to  be  troublesome, 
although  not  sufficient  to  constitute  the  person  In  question 
monstrous  and  so  make  ordinary  methods  of  education  entirely 
inapplicable. 


THE    EEOEGANIZATIOX    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  35 

inelastic  curriculum,  a  minimum  core  of  work  should 
be  provided  for  these,  which  could  be  indefinitely  ex- 
panded for  the  brighter  children,  Superintendent 
Hervey,*  of  Auburn,  X.  Y.,  after  commending  cer- 
tain aspects  of  the  plan,  said:  ''It  has  the  disadvan- 
tage ...  of  not  providing  for  the  more  rapid 
advancement  through  the  gTades  of  those  who,  with- 
out detriment  to  themselves,  could  cover  the  ground 
in  a  shorter  time."  At  the  bottom  of  this  criticism 
there  seems  to  me  to  lie  a  very  serious  misconception. 
There  are  doubtless  exceptional  human  beings  whom 
no  general  plan  of  education  would  fit ;  but  it  cannot 
be  too  emphatically  insisted  that,  speaking  generally, 
the  rapid  advancement  through  the  grades  of  a  phys- 
ically immature  person  having  an  unusually  quick 
and  vigorous  intellect,  is  not  a  desideratum,  but  a 
grave  evil.  The  contrary  notion  has  arisen  from  the 
fact  that  the  school  has  so  long  been  considered — 
and  has,  alas !  so  largely  been — merely  an  institution 
for  imparting  information,  or  at  best  as  a  place  for 
mental  training;  it  has  not  yet  come  to  be  generally 
recognized  as  that  which  modern  pedagogy  is  mak- 
ing it,  an  organized  instrumentality  to  assist  the  im- 
mature being  to  the  highest  development  possible  for 
his  luliole  nature,  physical  and  moral,  no  less  than 
intellectual.  The  human  being,  let  it  be  repeated, 
is  a  psycho-physical  unit ;  and  least  of  all  in  the  case 
of  the  child,  the  immature  being,  can  one  part  of  his 


*At  the  time  he  wrote  the  criticism.  Superintendent  of  Schools 
for  Pawtucket,  R.  I.  See  Rhode  Island  School  Report  for  1899, 
page  116. 


36  THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

nature  be  properly  cultivated  in  disregard  of  the  rest. 
The  plan  which  I  advocate  provides  for  the  promo- 
tion of  the  pupil  from  one  department  into  another 
as  soon  as  he  shall  have  completed  the  psycho-physical 
period  of  development  to  which  the  former  depart- 
ment is  adapted,  whether  he  has  gained  much  Or 
little  information,  much  or  little  physical,  psychical 
or  moral  training,  in  the  class  covering  the  previous 
period;  and  this,  I  confidently  maintain  (and  cite 
the  whole  literature  of  child  study  in  support  of  my 
contention),  is  the  only  advancement  through  the 
grades  that  can  he  had  "without  detriment  to  the 
pupil."  The  prepubescent  child  of  twelve  should 
not  be  put  in  harness  with  the  adolescent  of  sixteen, 
notwithstanding  that  the  former's  mental  brightness 
and  familiarity  with  literature,  science  and  history 
may  be  even  superior  to  the  latter's.  Let  the  child 
pursue  his  subjects  of  study  according  to  the  general 
method  adapted  to  his  stage  of  development  (al- 
though he  may  do  more  extensive  or  more  elaborate 
work  within  the  given  fields  than  most  of  his  class- 
mates), and  let  him  put  his  surplus  energy  into  the 
physical  exercise  that  may  protect  him  from  the  del- 
icacy and  ill  health  to  which  precocious  children  are 
so  often  subject. 

My  contention  does  not  mean  that  a  child  is  to  be 
in  a  given  class  just  because  his  tale  of  years  is  of  a 
given  length,  nor  that  he  is  to  be  kept  in  it  just  so 
many  years,  months,  or  days.  If,  as  sometimes  hap- 
pens, the  child  of  twelve  is  physically  as  well  as 


THE    REORGANIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  37 

mentally  mature  as  the  average  child  of  fourteen  or 
fifteen  by  all  means  put  him  with  the  latter,  and  do 
this  whether  or  not  he  has  acquired  as  much  informa- 
tion and  discipline  as  the  average  child  at  the  com- 
pletion of  the  elementary  school  period.  If  he  has 
not,  it  is  imfortunate ;  but  we  shall  not  mend  matters 
by  treating  him  as  a  hoy  after  he  has  become  a  youth. 
If  the  elementary  or  boyhood  department  of  school 
has  done  little  for  him,  we  must  look  to  the  adoles- 
cent school  in  the  hope  that  it  may  do  more  for  him. 
Section  5.  To  carry  out  the  plan  of  organization 
of  school  work  herein  proposed,  especially  in  the 
matter  of  determining  when  children  have  completed 
a  certain  stage  of  psycho-physical  development,  it  is 
desirable,  of  course,  that  in  every  city  school  system 
there  should  be  an  expert  physician,  who  has  made 
a  special  study  of  childhood  in  all  its  phases,  to  act 
as  physical  examiner  and  sanitary  expert.  Such  an 
expert  is,  however,  very  much  needed  under  existing 
systems  of  school  administration,  to  look  after  the 
health  of  the  children  and  save  those  defective  in 
some  one  or  more  particulars  from  the  burden  of 
unsuitable  requirements.  Nevertheless,  in  the  absence 
of  such  a  thoroughly  qualified  physician  toi  examine 
the  children  from  time  to  time  and  consult  with  the 
class  teacher  and  principals  as  to  the  advisability  of 
transferring  pupils  from  one  department  of  the 
school  to  another,  a  competent  superintendent  in  the 
smaller  school  communities  and  the  superintendent 
and  principal  or  other  supervising  officers  in  large 


C 


S  S  0  0 


38  THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

school  systems  could  do  quite  well  all  that  the  class 
teacher  with  a  fair  normal  school  training  might  not 
reasonably  be  expected  to  do.  When  in  accordance 
with  educational  and  physiological  expert  advice, 
based  upon  careful  observation  and  experiment,  the 
normal  average  number  of  years  for  the  duration  of 
the  play  school  and  the  elementary  school  classes  had 
once  been  determined,  there  would  as  a  rule  be  no 
special  call  for  watchfulness  on  the  part  of  any  but 
the  transition-class  teachers ;  and  indeed,  inasmuch 
as  the  relation  of  the  secondary  transition  class  to 
the  work  of  the  high  school  proper  or  adolescent 
school  that  follows  it,  is  such  that  any  youth  could 
with  advantage  enter  upon  the  work  of  the  latter  as 
soon  as  he  had  received  the  required  instruction  in 
the  former,  whether  that  should  take  one  or  two 
years,  the  only  position  that  would  regularly  call  for 
any  special  competence  in  judging  when  to  advance 
a  pupil  from  one  class  to  another,  would  be  that  of  the 
primary-transition  class  teacher.  By  observing  a 
wise  conservatism  and  not  promoting  the  children  to 
the  elementary  department  until  it  should  seem  quite 
beyond  a  reasonable  doubt  that  they  were  physically 
fit  to  undertake  the  work  of  the  elementary  depart- 
ment, the  primary-transition  teacher  could  discharge 
her  task  without  great  difficulty;  her  experience 
would  soon  make  her  expert,  and  meanwhile  (and 
always)  she  could  refer  any  doubtful  case  to  the 
supervising  authority,  the  principal  or  superintend- 
ent, and  she  and  they  could  always  consult  with  the 


THE    KEOEGANIZATIO:^    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  39 

parents  and  family  physician  in  case  of  exceptional 
difficulty. 

As  regards  these  transfers,  the  proper  plan  might 
be  to  make  the  normal  period  for  the  com- 
pletion of  the  work  of  the  play  school  and  the  ele- 
mentary school  somewhat  shorter  than  the  time  which 
the  average  child  takes  to  pass  through  the  corre- 
sponding stages  of  psycho-physical  development,  so 
that  the  children  would  be  regularly  passed  into  the 
transition  classes  at  a  date  that  would  be  so  early  in 
the  case  of  the  normal  child  as  to  ensure  that  he  was 
not  being  kept  under  educational  influences  that  he 
had  outgTown.  As  regards  the  primary  transition 
class,  its  spirit  and  in  large  measure  its  method 
would  be  so  similar  to  that  of  the  play  school — differ- 
ing onlv  in  allowing  a  little  more  freedom  to  individ- 
ual  idiosyncrasy  and  a  little  more  relaxation — 
that  neither  the  exceptionally  forward  nor  the  ex- 
ceptionally backward  child  would  be  harmed  by  being 
transferred  to  it  at  the  same  time  with  the  average 
child.  The  latter  would  remain  there  a  longer,  the 
former,  a  shorter  time;  that  would  be  all.  As  re- 
gards transfers  from  the  elementary  department  to 
the  secondary  transition  class,  restiveness  and  un- 
satisfactory response  to  the  method  of  the  elementary 
department  would  be  a  sufficient  indication  for  an 
early  transfer  in  the  case  of  a  physically  precocious 
child ;  a  slightly  backward  child  would  not  be  harmed 
by  being  transferred  when  the  rest  of  his  classmates 
are,  and  the  case  of  an  exceptionally  backward  child, 


40  THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

who  should  be  kept  longer  in  the  elementary  depart- 
ment, would  be  sufficiently  patent  to  give  no  intelli- 
gent teacher  or  supervising  officer  any  difficulty. 

A  little  consideration,  I  think,  will  make  evident 
that,  instead  of  increasing  the  burden  of  responsibility 
upon  teachers,  the  proposed  system  would  (except  in 
the  case  of  the  primary  transition  class  teachers) 
relieve  them  of  a  great  part  of  the  responsibility 
that  now  rests  upon  them.  The  play  school  teacher 
would  work  with  her  class  for,  say,  two  years,  do  all 
that  she  could  for  the  healthy  development  of  every 
one  of  her  pupils  within  that  time,  and  then  send 
them  all  to  the  primary  transition  class,  without  hav- 
ing to  bother  her  head  to  determine  whether  every 
individual  in  the  class  had  attained  a  "promotion 
grade."  Similarly  the  elementary  department  teach- 
er would  teach  her  class  for  four  year  (if  that  should 
be  the  period  determined  upon  by  the  school  authori- 
ties) and  then  transfer  to  the  secondary  transition 
class  all  but  the  very  exceptionally  immature  (who 
would  ordinarily  be  transferred  to  the  elementary 
class  next  below  hers,  leaving  her  free  to  take  a  new 
class  from  the  primary  transition  department).  And 
normally  the  secondary-transition  teachers  also 
would  simply  give  their  instruction  for  a  year  and 
then  let  the  young  people  pass  on  to  the  adolescent  de- 
partment or  high  school.  The  primary  transition  class 
teacher  alone  would  always  have  to  use  judgment  in 
determining  when  to  advance  her  children  to  the 
next  class;  and  in  case  of  marked  backwardness  in 


THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  41 

development  or  special  delicacy  the  chief  secondary 
transition  teacher  would  have  to  determine  whether 
to  keep  the  young  person  longer  than  a  year  in  her 
department. 

It  is  true,  as  indicated  above,  that  the  elementary 
department  teacher  may  have  to  deal  with  excep- 
tional cases.  She  may  find  it  well  to  advance  a  rapid- 
ly maturing  child  into  the  secondary  transition  class 
before  the  completion  of  the  term  of  years  established 
for  the  continuance  of  her  class,  or  to  transfer  him 
to  another  class  of  the  elementary  department,  in  ad- 
vance of  her  own ;  and  in  the  case  of  an  especially 
slowly  developing  child,  she  may  find  it  well  to  ad- 
vise that  he  be  put  into  the  next  elementary  class 
below  hers,  instead  of  proceeding  with  the  rest  of 
her  class.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  these  ex- 
ceptional cases  exist  and  need  special  treatment  just 
as  much  (more,  in  my  opinion)  under  any  other  sys- 
tem of  school  organization  as  they  would  under  that 
proposed ;  and  if  teachers  (making  a  special  exception 
of  the  primary  transition  teacher)  are  not  compe- 
tent to  deal  with  the  system  proposed,  they  must  (in 
view  of  their  inferior  opportunities)  be  even  less 
competent  to  meet  satisfactorily  the  difficulties  of 
the  prevailing  system  of  organization.  And  finally 
it  may  be  well  to  call  attention  again  to  the  fact  that 
it  would  be  the  especial  business  of  the  principals 
and  other  supervising  officers  to  be  on  the  lookout  for 
these  exceptional  cases  and  to  advise  the  class  teach- 
ers regarding  them,  and  that  it  would  be  the  duty  of 


42  THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

the  principal  or  superintendent  to  take  the  chief  bur- 
den of  determining  transfers  from  the  primary  tran- 
sition class  in  case  such  a  class  should  have  to  be 
entrusted  to  an  inexperienced  teacher  (which  should 
not  ordinarily  be  the  case). 

As  to  the  details  of  the  organization  of  supervision, 
whether  there  should  be  a  principal  for  each  of  the 
school  departments  (play  school,  primary  transition 
department,  elementary  department,  secondary 
transition  department,  and  adolescent  department, 
or  high  school)  or  whether  two  or  more  of  these  should 
be  under  the  same  principal,  this  would  have  to  be 
determined  by  local  conditions,  the  size  of  the  schools 
and  of  the  school  system,  etc.,  and  in  some  measure 
by  the  personal  equation.  The  superintendent  should 
have  as  many  assistants,  principals  or  head  teachers 
to  help  him  in  the  supervision  of  the  schools  as  he 
may  find  necessary.  But  it  may  be  said  in  general 
that  it  would  be  advisable  to  associate  the  play  school 
and  the  primary  transition  department  especially 
closely,  and  that  the  most  competent  and  experienced 
teacher  working  in  any  one  department  of  the  school 
might  be  recognized  as  a  sort  of  head  teacher  for  that 
department,  to  whom  the  other  teachers  could  look 
for  counsel  and  who  Avould  be  entitled  to  give  such 
counsel  on  her  own  initiative.  As  regards  the  sec- 
ondary transition  department,  the  instruction  in  the 
several  regular  courses  should  be  given  by  specialists, 
who  might  also  be  instructors  in  the  high  school  prop- 
er ;  but  there  should  be  one  principal  teacher  for  the 


THE    REOEGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  43 

secondary  transition  department,  who  should  have 
general  charge  of  the  class,  and  who  might  well  be 
the  teacher  who  would  be  immediately  charged  with 
the  especial  work  of  the  more  backward  members  of 
the  class. 

Section  6.  A  number  of  the  special  questions  that 
may  be  suggested  by  the  foregoing  discussion  can 
only  be  answered  intelligently  after  a  somewhat  par- 
ticular consideration  of  the  scope  of  the  several  de- 
partments, or  periods  of  school  life  corresponding  to 
the  several  normal  stages  of  psycho-physical  develop- 
ment referred  to  in  Postulate  III.  To  such  a  partic- 
ular consideration  the  reader's  attention  is  now 
invited. 


11. 

As  to  the  Scope  of  the  Several  Departments  of  the 
School. 

Section  1.     The  Play  School. 

First  of  all  comes  the  play  school,  in  Avhich  the 
child  should  normally  begin  his  school  career  and  in 
which  he  should  remain  during  the  first  stage  of 
psycho-physical  development  with  which  the  school 
is  concerned,  which  we  have  designated  as  the  stage  of 
childhood  proper,  as  distinguished  from  the  preceed- 
ing  stage  of  infancy  and  the  later  stage  of  boyhood 


44  THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

or  girlhood  proper.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  state 
that  the  stage  or  stages  of  infancy  prior  to  the  third 
year  of  life,  need  not  be  taken  into  account  by  us  in 
considering  the  organization  of  school  education,  for 
the  consensus  of  opinion  is  practically  unanimous 
that,  under  the  social  conditions  that  prevail  in  the 
civilized  world  today,  the  home  is  the  most  suitable 
place  for  the  education  of  the  little  being  that  has  not 
yet  passed  out  of  the  stage  of  infancy. 

With  regard  to  the  fairly  well  marked  stage  of 
childhood,  for  which  the  play  school  is  designed,  I 
shall  not  repeat  here  what  competent  observers  and 
students  have  set  forth  in  regard  to  it,  but  will  con- 
tent myself  with  a  reference  to  the  article  in  the 
Pedagogical  Seminary  for  1900  (volume  7)  entitled 
"Nascent  Stages  and  their  Pedagogical  Significance," 
by  Mr.  E.  B.  Bryan,  at  one  time  Superintendent  of 
Education  in  the  Philippines,  an  article  that  from 
the  standpoint  of  pedagogy  gives  the  best  summary  of 
the  several  stages  of  human  development  with  which 
I  am  familiar.  I  shall,  however,  recall  to  my  readers' 
minds  that  this  is  a  stage  of  fairly  steady  growth 
in  height  and  weight  and  a  period  of  great  mental 
activity,  but  one  in  which,  "owing  to  a  lack  of  devel- 
opment of  the  peripheral  muscles  and  the  nerves  that 
.  control  them,"  the  movements  of  the  child  "are  un- 
coordinated, so  that  he  is  not  effective  as  a  producer, 
and  activity  is  its  own  excuse  for  being"  ;  and  I  would 
also  recall  that  this  stage  of  development,  beginning 
normally  about  the  completion  of  the  second  year  of 


THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  45 

post-natal  life,  seems  to  end  about  the  eightli  year 
in  the  case  of  most  American  children,  when  "the 
brain  has  approximated  its  full  weight  and  is  chang- 
ing in  its  development  from  increase  in  size  to  in- 
crease of  function" ;  and  I  would  finally  remind  my 
readers  that  in  addition  to  this  brain  change  there  is 
also,  at  the  time  of  completion  of  this  stage  of  devel- 
opment, "a  change  in  the  rate  of  bodily  grpwth,  so 
that  the  annual  increase  will  be  greater  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  [new  or  transition']  stage  than  it  has 
been  through  the  stage  of  childhood.  The  child  is 
losing  his  first  teeth  and  the  permanent  ones  are  com- 
ing. This  more  objective  and  superficial  change  seen 
in  the  case  of  the  teeth  has  many  physical  and  mental 
counterparts,"  so  that  ''the  child  is  not  quite  at  its 
best  either  physically  or  mentally." 

The  play  school  should  be  primarily  devoted  to 
healthy  development  and  the  cultivation — or  let  us 
rather  say,  the  encouragemeni: — of  wide  interests,  not 
to  instilling  into  the  child's  mind  a  definite  quantum 
of  exact  information,  nor  to  constant  drill  in  the  use 
of  the  ''three  R's,"  the  elementary  tools  of  scholarly 
acquisition  and  expression.  As  everyone  knows,  the 
child  at  this  period  is  an  animated  interrogation 
point  (that  is,  until  his  great  natural  "curiosity" — 
perhaps  his  divinest  gift — has  been  dulled  by  the  un- 
responsiveness and  continued  snubbing  of  those 
about  him),  and  desires  to  know  about  everything, 
to  imitate  every  activity,  and  in  general  to  do  every- 
thing that  is  suggested  to  him  bv  his  environment 


46  THE    KEOEGAXIZATIOX    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

and  by  the  development  of  his  physical  and  mental 
powers;  and  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  for  his 
future  development,  even  more  than  for  his  present 
richness  of  life,  that  this  catholicity  of  interest 
and  high-hearted  readiness  to  try  his  powers  upon 
everything  should  be  cultivated. 

Incidental  to  the  cultivation  of  this  inclination  to 
find  interest  in  all  that  is,  in  every  department  of 
human  knowledge  and  human  activity,  it  should  be 
as  easy  as  it  is  desirable  to  lead  the  child  before  the 
expiration  of  this  period  of  his,  development,  to  the 
perception  that  the  ability  to  measure  and  to  count 
and  the  ability  to  understand  and  to  use  written  as 
well  as  oral  language  will  contribute  much  to  his 
happiness,  by  enabling  him  to  do  things  that  he  al- 
ready wishes  to  do,  and  to  find  out  things  for  him- 
self. If  this  much  be  accomplished  at  this  time,  it 
will  be  found  that  when  he  reaches  the  age  for 
systematic  training  in  the  three  R's  he  will  take  up 
his  work  in  arithmetic  and  in  reading  and  writing 
with  the  zest  that  comes  from  understanding  the  pur- 
pose, and  having  a  present  appreciation  of  the  value 
of  these  studies,  instead  of  regarding  them  as  a  more 
or  less  mysterious  drudgery  to  which  children  are 
subjected  by  grown-ups  on  the  assumption  that  when 
the  children  themselves  become  grown-ups  they  will 
have  a  use  for  it  all. 

As  regards  the  other  studies  to  be  systematically 
pursued  as  special  subjects  in  later  school  life,  such 
as  history,  geography,   and  physical,   chemical  and 


THE    EEOEGANIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  47 

biological  science,  a  proper  interest  in  them  will  be 
aroused  by  the  nature  study,  by  the  observation  and 
imitation  of  living  things  and  of  the  simpler  and 
more  readily  comprehensible  and  imitable  forms  of 
adult  human  occupation,  and  by  the  plays  and  the 
stories  that  should  take  up  the  time  and  constitute 
the  play-work  of  this  period  of  school  life. 

It  is  through  the  play-impulse  and  the  delight  in 
discovery  that  the  child's  mind  and  body  should  be 
developed  at  this  period ;  but  with  reference  to  play, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  elaborately  organized 
"plays"  are  not  suited  to  the  child  at  this  time  and 
are  really  hard  work  for  him.  The  children  should 
be  given  large  opportunity  for  free  play,  play  that 
will  not  only  be  spontaneous,  but  that  must  in  large 
measure  be  individual.  Very  simple  joint  plays, 
either  ring  plays,  in  which  all  or  a  moiety  of  the 
children  do  the  same  thing  at  the  same  time,  or  plays 
of  the  follow-my-leader  type,  in  which  the  children 
successively  do  the  same  thing  (provided  plays  of  the 
latter  type  be  of  short  duration)  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  very  loosely  organized  plays  in  which  the  par- 
ticipants are  at  liberty  to  carry  on  their  several  parts 
very  much  in  their  o^vn  way,  will  doubtless  be  good ; 
but  much  "team  work,"  as  that  term  is  now  generally 
understood  in  the  field  of  sport — that  is  to  say, 
elaborate  cooperative  plays  in  which  the  individual 
members  perform  different  functions  in  the  perform- 
ance of  which  the  player  must  subordinate  his  play 
to  the  interest  of  a  fijial  end  to  be  attained  by  the 


48  THE    REORGANIZATION    OP    OUR    SCHOOLS 

group  as  a  group, — would  be  serious  work  for  a  child, 
and  would  constitute  a  strain  upon  his  physical 
powers  of  cooperation  that  would  probably  be  as 
injurious  to  his  healthy  development  as  physical 
exercises  that  should  demand  accurate  coordi- 
nation of  the  finer  muscles.  There  should  not 
be  expected  or  even  permitted  at  this  time  any 
functioning  of  mind  or  body  so  elaborate  as  to  draw 
largely  upon  the  vital  energy,  which  in  childhood 
must  be  primarily  devoted  to  increase  in  bulk  and 
organization  of  the  brain  and  nervous  system  and  of 
the  muscular  system  and  the  rest  of  the  body. 

In  so  far  as  the  child's  occupation  is  free  play, 
carried  on  for  the  delight  of  doing  it  and  given  up 
by  each  child  the  moment  he  wearies  of  it,  he  may  be 
allowed  great  range;  but,  bearing  in  mind  that  the 
object  of  WORK  "is  a  definite  product,  physical  or 
mental",  the  worlc  of  the  play  school  should  be  lim- 
ited to  those  kinds  of  activity  for  which  the  child  has 
a  fair  degree  of  capacity,  those  in  which  he  can  work 
with  facility;  and  in  occupations  of  this  sort  he 
should  of  course  be  encouraged  to  do  as  well  as  he 
can.  While  the  occupations  of  the  play  school  should, 
I  think,  be  mainly  play,  some  work  should  be  de- 
manded of  the  child  for  the  sake  of  his  moral  develop- 
ment, lest  his  nascent  power  of  self-control  should 
become  somewhat  atrophied  from  disuse  and  his 
spiritual  nature  be  arrested  in  that  pre-moral  stage 
of  egoism  perfectly  natural  to  the  young  child. 

As  regards  the  content  of  the  instruction  given  to 


THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  49 

the  child  at  this  time,  let  me  speak  first  of  the  tradi- 
tional three  K's.  It  seems  to  me  that  arithmetic, 
reading  and  writing,  should  only  be  taught  to  the  ex- 
tent that  is  found  thoroughly  enjoyable  by  the  child 
at  this  age,  and  only  for  periods  in  any  given  day  so 
brief  that  the  children's  attention  may  be  readily 
held  throughout  them.  Board  work  in  reading  and 
writing  should  precede  the  use  of  books  or  paper. 
At  the  end  of  this  period  the  child  may  have  learned 
to  read  from  the  board  and  from  large-print  books 
very  short  and  simple  compositions, — stories,  descrip- 
tions and  songs, — and  he  may  also  be  able  to  work 
very  simple  "mental"  arithmetical  problems  in  count- 
ing, adding,  subtracting,  multiplying  and  dividing, 
and  be  able  to  read  and  write  the  digits  and  to  under- 
stand the  place  of  units,  tens  and  hundreds.  But  with 
little  regard  to  the  extent  of  the  acquirements  gained 
here,  I  think  that  arithmetic  should  be  taken  up  sys- 
tematically in  the  elementary  department  in  such  a 
way  that  the  child  who  had  failed  to  get  any  idea  of 
number  work  in  the  play  school  or  the  primary 
transition  department  might  make  a  fresh  start  in 
this  later  school  period. 

Nature  study  and  the  imitation  of  simple  forms  of 
adult  occupation ;  descriptions  of  early  stages  of 
human  society,  and  stories  from  early  periods  of  his- 
tory illustrated  by  pictures  and  simple  reconstruct- 
tions,  cave  and  wigwam  making,  weaving,  sand  and 
clay  modeling,  simple  gardening  and  cooking ;  myths ; 
healthy  free  play  and  exercises  that  do  not  strain  the 


50  THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

undeveloped  psychic  powers  of  cooperation  or  the  un- 
developed physical  powers  of  accurate  coordination ; 
such  loving  little  services  for  relatives  and  friends 
as  are  quite  within  the  child's  powers, — these  should 
constitute  the  bulk  of  the  curriculum  of  the  play 
school. 

As  regards  myths,  generally  associated  as  they  are 
with  the  phenomena  of  nature  or  with  phenomena  of 
moral  consciousness,  it  should  be  said  in  passing  that 
they  should  never  be  given  as  pure  stories  quite  with- 
out explanation  or  introduction,  nor  should  they  be 
elaborately  analyzed  and  the  allegory  set  forth  with 
great  circumstantiality.  They  should  rather  be  pre- 
sented as  stories  coming  down  from  early  times, 
either  representing  a  belief  of  that  time  as  to  some- 
thing of  interest  to  human  life,  or  else  being  a  man- 
ner of  representing  that  something  which  gave  pleas- 
ure to  those  from  whom  we  got  the  myth,  and  which 
may  give  pleasure  to  the  children.  Whether  they 
should  be  accompanied  or  followed  by  a  more  scien- 
tific representation  of  the  matter  in  question  would 
depend  entirely  upon  the  special  circumstances  of  the 
case  and  upon  the  imaginative  development,  the  ma- 
turity and  the  curiosity  of  the  child  or  children  to 
whom  the  myth  is  told.  But  care  should  always  be 
taken  to  present  the  myth  (whether  heathen  or  Bib- 
lical) in  such  a  way  that,  when  the  child  should  later 
acquire  a  more  scientific  notion  of  the  thing  in  ques- 
tion, he  should  not  feel  that  an  untruthful  represen- 
tation had  been  made  to  him  by  his  early  teacher. 


THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  51 

As  regards  moral  education  in  the  play  school,  the 
whole  conduct  of  the  school  should  give  it ;  and  right 
conduct  upon  the  part  of  the  child  should  be  taught 
by  example  and  suggestion,  by  timely,  concrete  pre- 
cept, by  warm  approval  of  serviceableness  and  sympa- 
thy and~"consideration  for  others  and  of  cleanliness 
and  orderliness,  and  also  by  telling  interesting  stories 
that  the  children  will  love  for  their  ovm  sake,  for 
their  action  and  imagery,  and  that  w^ll  at  the  same 
time  nTiake.virtue  appear  beautiful, — stories  in  which 
truthfulness  and  simplicity,  generosity  and  courtesy 
and  respect  for  the  counsel  and  instructions  of  those 
who  are  older  and  wiser  than  the  hero  or  heroine  or 
upon  whom  he  or  she  is  dependent,  shall  characterize 
the  said  hero  or  heroine.  We  should  avoid  trying 
to  teach  by  terrible  example.  The  less  suggestion  of 
evil,  by  the  presentation  of  the  misadventures  of  the 
lazy,  the  filthy,  the  discourteous,  the  disobedient,  the 
unkind,  and  the  cruel,  the  better.  In  special  cases,  or 
where  lightly  and  incidentally  suggested,  this  may  do 
no  harm  and  may  occasionally  do  good ;  but  the  less 
of  it  the  better.  Avoid  especially  giving  the  bad 
character  the  center  of  the  field'  or  using  a  bad  per- 
son as  a  foil  to  bring  out  the  excellences  of  another. 
Stories  of  this  kind  tend  to  give  a  false  idea  of  life 
(for*  in  real  life  we  do  not  find  sheep  and  goats,  per- 
fect heroes  and  perfectly  wricked  villains,  but  only 
more  or  less  lovable  human  beings  with  varying  kinds 
and  degrees  of  faultiness)  and  are  quite  certain  to 
cultivate  priggishness  even  if  they  do  not  encourage 


52  THE    BEOEGANIZATION    OF    OTJE    SCHOOLS 

the  despicable  and  soul-destroying  tendency  to  be  ever 
on  the  lookout  for  inferiority  and  unrighteousness 
with  which  to  compare  one's  self  or  one's  heroes,  in- 
stead of  seeking  to  make  one's  life  beautiful  by  doing 
beautiful  things  without  thought  of  unbeautiful  con- 
duct or  persons.  "We  should  guard  also  against  the 
common  disposition  to  make  a  myth  or  Bible  story 
or  popular  anecdote  serve  a  definite  moral  purpose, 
when  if  undoctored  it  might  have  a  quite  different  ef- 
fect. Above  all,  in  dealing  with  heroes  of  history 
or  legend,  we  should  never  whitewash  their  conduct 
in  a  questionable  matter ;  this  is  the  most  dangerous 
form  of  teaching  immorality  hy  suggestion. 

In  conclusion  I  would  say  that  morality  is  to  be 
encouraged  in  the  play  school  (as  everywhere  else) 
chiefly  by  accustoming  the  child  to  moral  habits.  But 
obedience  must,  in  case  of  need,  be  insisted  upon, 
even  though  the  child  does  not  understand  why  he  is 
compelled  to  do  the  particular  thing  in  question; 
for  the  child  must  learn  that  his  general  well-being 
is  dependent  upon  submission  to  his  guardians  and  to 
the  various  instrumentalities  of  control  established 
by  society,  and  he  should  learn  early  the  important 
lesson  of  life,  that  one  cannot,  and  should  not  expect 
to,  have  one's  own  way  in  all  things. 

Section  2.     The  Primary  Transition  Class. 

What  needs  to  be  said  about  this  stage  of  school 
life,  in  addition  to  what  has  already  been  said  under 
the  heading  of  The  Play  School,  will  for  the  sake  of 


THE    KEOEGANIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  53 

brevity  and  convenience,  be  stated  in  connection  with 
the  discussion  of  the  Adaptability  of  the  Curriculum 
to  Various  Classes  of  Young  Persons,  in  III  infra. 


Section   3.     The  Elementary  Depart:ment,   or 
School  of  Boyhood  and  Girlhood  Proper. 

A.  General  View.  In  this  department  of  school 
life  all  the  required  work  should  be  done  during 
school  hours,  except  a  limited  amount  of  gathering 
material  and  of  individual  observation  in  nature 
study  and  perhaps  also  in  the  study  of  human  occu- 
pations and  institutions.  There  may,  however,  be  a 
considerable  amount  of  optional  reading  and  compo- 
sition work,  and  once  or  twice  a  year  in  the  later 
years  of  the  course  the  teacher  might  require  the 
preparation  of  a  composition  out  of  school. 

Speaking  of  this  period — the  period  of  boyhood 
and  girlhood  proper,  as  distinguished  from  the  pre- 
ceding stage  of  childhood — Bryan  in  the  work  pre- 
viously cited  says :  "The  child  is  not  simply  his  form- 
er self  gro-wn  larger,  but  is  in  many  ways  an  alto- 
gether different  being."  "This  is  the  period  of  en- 
durance and  of  coordination  mental  and  physical, 
and  mental  with  physical,  the  time  for  the  storing  up 
of  reserve  power  and  the  esiablishment  of  automa- 
tisms' [Italics  mine].  The  students  of  this  period  of 
development  generally  agree  that  it  is  a  period  of 
fair  strength  and  coordination  and  exceptional  plas- 


54  THE    BEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

ticity  of  tissue,  muscular  and  neural.  Hence  it  is 
the  time  for  mental  drill  and  practise,  and  for  physi- 
cal drill  and  practise  so  far  as  the  resultant  physical 
development  and  training  will  not  be  lost  by  reason 
of  the  very  considerable  muscular  and  neural  changes 
taking  place  at  and  after  pubescence. 

Bryan  does  well  to  remind  us  that  attention  brings 
interest  as  truly  as  interest  brings  attention,  and 
therefore  he  advises  that  the  attention  of  boys  and 
girls  at  this  stage  of  development  be  directed  to 
"those  things  which  serve  as  the  alphabets  of  formal 
school  work"  [I  should  prefer  to  say,  the  alphabets 
of  the  universal  (i.  e.,  universally  needed)  arts  of 
civilization],  even  though  at  times  their  interest  in 
some  lines  must  be  induced  by  attention  to  them.  As 
to  the  ease  with  which  this  attention  may  be  gained 
and  held,  he  wisely  says  that  "if  the  time  given  to 
reading  before  the  child  was  seven  years  of  age  were 
given  to  real  things  in  which  he  has  a  lively  interest 
it  would  bring  such  a  fund  of  information 
and  interest  to  the  reading  work  at  nine  years  of  age 
that  the  problem  of  method  in  teaching  reading  would 
practically  solve  itself." 

B.  Curriculum.  In  this  stage  of  school  life 
there  should  be  a  fairly  systematic  study  of : — 

1.  Reckoning,  or  "Mathematics". — The  bulk  of 
the  work  in  mathematics  should  doubtless  be  what 
is  designated  as  arithmetic  proper,  but  in  connection 
with  this  and  with  the  manual  training,  drawing 
and  geography,   the  elements  of  concrete  geometry 


THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  55 

would  be  learned,  and  I  incline  to  the  belief  that  be- 
fore the  expiration  of  this  period  of  school  life  there 
should  be  at  least  so  much  algebra  introduced  as  to 
give  the  boy  or  girl  the  idea  of  dealing  with  general- 
ized qiiantities,  or,  in  other  words,  with  literal  sym- 
bols.* It  is  not  necessary  that  this  should  be  taught 
under  the  name  of  "algebra" ;  it  may  well  be  pre- 
sented simply  as  one  aspect  of  elementary  mathe- 
matics. 

To  maintain  such  an  elasticity  throughout  the 
whole  school  system  as  to  make  it  adaptable  to  the 
needs  of  all  classes  of  school  children,  however  irreg- 
ular special  circumstances  may  compel  them  to  be  in 
their  attendance ;  to  make  it  possible  for  any  boy  at 
any  given  stage  in  his  boyhood  to  find  his  proper  place 
in  the  school  without  primary  reference  to  certain 
definite  attainments  in  school  lore,  and  to  enable  him 
to  leave  the  school  at  any  time  that  he  may  be  com- 
pelled to  do  so,  with  an  education  relatively  complete 
in  reference  to  his  then  stage  of  development,  and 
fitting  him  to  make  the  most  of  life  with  the  equip- 
ment thus  far  attained, — it  seems  to  me  very  desir- 
able that  the  arithmetic  should  be  taught  in  what 
is  sometimes  called  the  "concentric  circle"  man- 
ner,f  the  fundamental  principles  being  early  learned 
in  and  through  their  simplest  applications  and  re- 


*  This  is  done  in  Germany;  and  in  a  number  of  the  best 
schools,  where  mathematics,  rather  than  "arithmetic",  is  the 
subject  of  study,  the  elements  of  arithmetic,  geometry  and  al- 
gebra are  all  acquired  simply  and  naturally  in  the  lower  grades. 

t  Frank  Hall's  School  Arithmetic  is  one  in  which  the  subject 
is  presented   in   this   way. 


56  THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

peated  again  and  again  with  increasingly  difficult  ap- 
plications. It  has  been  shown  in  the  better  primary 
schools  that  the  principles  of  fractions  may  be  used 
in  their  application  to  simple  concrete  cases  long  be- 
fore the  pupil  has  learned  the  symbols  for  fractions 
or  knows  that  he  knows  anything  about  fractions. 
Does  not  all  work  in  division,  indeed,  when  intelli- 
gently done  and  not  worked  merely  in  accordance 
with  a  rule  learned  by  rote,  constitute  work  in  frac- 
tions ? 

Finally,  let  it  be  said  that  just  so  much  of  mathe- 
matics should  be  learned  by  each  individual  pupil, 
within  this  period  of  school  life,  as  he  can  learn 
without  undue  effort.  There  should  he  no  fixed  re- 
quirement of  hnowledge  for  graduation  from  this  de- 
partment of  the  school,  and  no  driving  or  overwork 
for  slow  or  dull  'pupils. 

2.  Language  (Oral  speech  and  its  written  and 
printed  symbols). — Writing  should  of  course  be  sys- 
tematically practised,  and  the  use  of  the  vernacular 
— oral  and  written  composition,  reading  and  spelling 
— should  be  a  constant  part  of  the  work  in  this 
school.  In  spelling  a  select  list  of  a  few  hundred 
difficult  or  especially  irregular  words  belonging  to  the 
everyday^'  vocabulary  of  life  should  be  learned,  in 
addition  to  the  incidental  learning  of  spelling  in  con- 
nection with  reading  and  writing.    In  the  latter  part 


*  Why  should  the  child  spend  his  time  learning  to  spell  such 
words  as  phthysic?  In  forty  years  of  a  somewhat  wide  expe- 
rience of  life,  as  teacher,  lawyer,  journalist,  etc.,  I  have  never 
had  any  occasion  to  use  the  word  except  as  I  am  using  it  now. 


THE    EEORGANIZATIOX    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  57 

of  the  course  the  elements*  of  grammar  should  be 
brought  to  the  consciousness  of  the  boy  and  girl  (in 
which  work  the  study  of  another  modern  language 
than  the  vernacular  would  assist)  ;  and  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  some  notion  of  comparative  philology 
might  be  given  either  by  the  foreign-language  teacher 
or  by  the  class-teacher  in  connection  with  the  work 
in  history  and  English,  but  this  is  doubtful.  There 
should  of  course  be  systematic  development  in  the 
language  work,  and  the  cultivation  of  a  knowledge  of 
and  love  for  literature  should  be  a  conscious  aim  on 
the  part  of  the  teacher.  Yet,  throughout,  the  lan- 
guage work  should  be  coordinated  with,  and  by  the 
teacher  consciously  made  a  part  of,  the  history,  geog- 
raphy and  nature  study,  as  indeed  of  every  study  in 
the  school. 

This  is  the  golden  age  for  the  practical  acquire- 
ment of  a  foreign  language,  and  wherever  possible  at 
least  one  modern  language  should  be  pursued  by  the 
conversational  method  throughout  this  department 
of  the  school.  In  the  case  of  pupils  who  are  later  to 
study  several  foreign  languages,  I  should  prefer 
French,-}-  both  because  the  difficulties  in  its  pronun- 
ciation are  best  mastered  at  this  age  and  because  th(> 
simplicity  of  its  grammar  would  make  its  mastery 
easier  than  that  of  a  more  elaborately  inflected  lan- 


♦  It  seems  to  me  highly  unwise  to  trouble  the  child  with 
minutiae,  to  set  him,  for  instance,  to  distinguish  nicely  between 
adverbial  and  adjective  modifiers  in  cases  as  to  which  it  is  often 
difficult  for   specialists  in  grammar  to  agree. 

t  Today,  in  a  gi-eat  number  of  American  communities,  Span- 
ish would  be  the  most  advisable  foreig-n  language  for  the  public 
schools. 


58  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

guage,  and  would  thus  bring  to  the  boy  or  girl  the 
stimuhis  of  success  and  give  him  greater  confidence 
in  himself  generally  and  especially  in  his  ability  to 
learn  a  foreign  language. 

3.  The  Economic  and  Cultural  Development  of 
ManMnd,  or  '"History" — The  history  of  the  elemen- 
tary department  should  not  treat  merely  of  the  life 
and  institutions  of  the  aborigines  of  America  and 
of  so  much  of  the  recent  development  of  Anglo-Saxon 
civilization  as  happened  to  be  transferred  a  few  gen- 
erations ago  to  the  American  continent,  but  should 
treat  of  the  general  development  of  human  society 
and  culture,  and  especially  of  economic  development, 
which  would  make  the  most  natural  center  of  interest 
from  which  to  gain  some  intelligent  information  as 
to  the  development  of  art  and  science  and  the  accom- 
panying changes  in  social,  political  and  religious  in- 
stitutions that  have  taken  place  as  men  have  risen 
from  savagery  and  barbarism  to  civilization.  In 
other  words,  the  conventional  study  of  history  should 
in  the  elementary  department  be  replaced  by  such  a 
study  of  the  social  life  of  man — economic,  political, 
religious  and  esthetic — as  shall  tend  to  make  the  com- 
plex machinery  of  modern  civilization  comprehensible 
to  the  boy  and  girl  by  reference  to  the  simpler  life  of 
a  lower  stage  of  human  development  out  of  which  all 
modern  civilization  (of  which  whole  our  American 
civilization  is  but  one  of  the  parts)  has  developed. 
The  natural  sympathy  of  the  pre-adolescent  child  of 
civilization  for  the  manner  of  life  of  less  highly  de- 


THE    EEOEGANIZATIOX    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  59 

veloped  human  societies,  suggests  the  best  and  most 
effective  way  of  giving  the  child  an  insight  into  the 
real  significance  of  history,  inasmuch  as  it  affords  a 
way  of  approaching  the  subject  that  is  full  of  inter- 
est for  him,  and  even  of  delight,  in  proportion  as  he 
is  encouraged  to  act  out  and  live  again  in  some  meas- 
ure the  history  of  the  race.* 

In  connection  with  the  study  of  geography  the 
story  of  the  formation  of  the  principal  modern  na- 
tional states  might  be  given  to  the  boys  and  girls  in 
a  very  few  words,  and  of  course  the  story  of  the 
United  States  and  of  the  boys  and  girls'  home  com- 
munity would  be  treated  more  fully  than  other  parts 
of  history.  The  work  in  history  would  naturally 
bring  about  an  interest  in  civics. 

Throughout  the  elementary  study  of  history,  biog- 
raphy might  well  play  a  large  part,  but  it  certainly 
should  not  be  the  exclusive  method  of  approaching 
the  subject.  Geography  and  the  various  arts  of  ex- 
pression— modeling  in  sand  and  clay,  basket  work 
and  weaving,  wood  and  perhaps  a  little  metal  work, 
brush  and  pencil  work,  and  of  course  literature — 
should  all  make  their  contribution  to  the  study  of 
human  development  (which  I  take  to  be  the  meaning 
of  history)  as  should  also  individual  and  class  excur- 
sions. 

4.     Geography    (physical,   political   and   commer- 


•  The  elementary  school  forming  a  part  of  the  Universitv  of 
Chicago's  School  of  Education  has  given  the  most  successful 
Illustration  of  this  method  of  teaching  history  that  is  known  to 
nie. 


60  THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

cial), — never  losing  sight  of  the  close  connection  of 
this  subject  with  nature  study  in  general,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  with  human  economics,  or  history,  on  the 
other. 

5.  Nature  Study,  or  Elementary  Science, — in 
which  it  would  be  well  to  keep  in  mind  the  associa- 
tions of  the  subject  with  geography,  as  well  as  to  do 
what  can  be  done  to  lead  the  child  to  the  gradual 
realization  that  all  human  civilization  so  far  attained 
rests  upon  the  partial  understanding  of  nature  and 
the  application  of  natural  forces.  After  saying  this, 
I  need  hardly  say  that,  notwithstanding  the  advocacy 
of  the  opposite  view  by  such  a  competent  guide  to 
nature  study  as  Professor  Hodges  of  Clark  Univer- 
sity, I  have  the  strongest  conviction  that  the  elemen- 
tary facts  of  physics  and  chemistry,  and  not  merely 
the  study  of  plants  and  animals,  should  constitute  a 
part  of  the  nature  study  of  the  elementary  depart- 
ment. 

6.  Art  and  Manual  Training. — Modeling  in  sand 
and  clay,  brush  work  (with  and  without  color)  and 
pencil  work,  wood  work,  weaving  or  basket  work,  and 
vocal  music  should  be  pursued  by  all;  and  to  these 
other  manual  arts  might  be  added  if  convenient, 
while  in  the  latter  part  of  the  course  elementary 
metal  work  for  boys  might,  and  training  in  the  do- 
mestic arts  (housekeeping,  cooking  and  sewing)  for 
the  girls,  should  be  provided. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  arts  of  writing;  and 
reading  have  already  been  mentioned  under  the  head- 


THE    KEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  01 

ing  Language,  and  that  the  boys  and  girls  would  gain 
an  introduction  to  a  number  of  the  practical  arts  of 
life  through  their  study  of  social  economics,  or  "his- 
tory," and  their  nature  study  (I  have  in  mind  such 
arts  as  gardening  and  simple  cookery).  But  I  have 
made  a  special  heading  of  art  and  manual  training 
because  there  should  be  a  special  time  set  apart  for 
systematic  training  of  the  hand  and  eye  in  coopera- 
tion, and  for  similar  training  in  singing  and  the  ele- 
ments of  music. 

Last,  but  by  no  means  least, — 

7.  Physical  Culture  should  constitute  a  regular 
part  of  the  work  of  the  school;  and  in  connection 
with  this  branch  especially,  which  should  if  possible 
be  under  the  supervision  of  a  skilled  physician 
trained  for  the  work  of  a  physical  director  and  health 
officer,  every  effort  should  be  made  to  study  the  in- 
dividual needs  of  the  boys  and  girls  and  to  train  them 
in  healthful  and  cleanly  habits. 

C.  Usual  Daily  Pkogeam.  I  shall  finish  this 
section  by  suggesting  a  daily  program  for  the  elemen- 
tary department.  Those  who  advocate  for  the  ele- 
mentary school  manual  training,  physical  culture, 
nature  study  and  the  study  of  the  fundamental  arts 
and  institutions  of  human  society, — what  the  Ger- 
mans call  the  Realien,  or  subjects  of  actual  human 
interest,  and  what  the  conservatives  call  the  fads, — 
are  continually  being  asked  how  these  things  can  be 
taught  without  crowding  out  the  all-important  three 
R's;  and  while  a  partial  answer  to  this  is  that  the 


62  THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

modern  educator  is  constantly  giving  the  child  train- 
ins;  in  lanariaffe  and  number  work  incidental  to  his 
study  of  the  things  that  are  of  interest  to  him  in  na- 
ture and  human  society,  it  is  desirable  to  show,  in  ad- 
dition to  this,  that  ample  time  can  be  set  aside  for 
specific  drill  in  the  three  K's,  the  alphabet  of  scholar- 
ship, without  excluding  the  subjects  of  actual  human 
interest  and  the  training  of  the  mind  and  body  for  a 
ready  response  to  the  demands  of  a  large,  free,  beauti- 
ful life.  Another  reason  for  suggesting  a  daily  pro- 
gram is  to  show  how  conveniently  the  work  of  the  gen- 
eral class  teacher  and  that  of  special  teachers  for  mu- 
sic and  other  forms  of  art,  manual  training,  physical 
culture  and  foreign  language  can  be  arranged,  so  that, 
in  the  case  of  a  fairly  large  and  well-to-do  school  com- 
munity that  can  afford  to  have  these  special  branches 
taught  by  special  teachers,  all  the  work  of  the  gen- 
eral class  teacher  could  be  done  in  the  morning,  leav- 
ing the  children  the  afternoon  for  work  with  the 
special  teachers.  If,  however,  the  school  authorities 
should  feel  that  they  could  not  afford  to  pay  teachers 
for  but  half  a  day's  work,  the  program  I  have  sug- 
gested is  so  far  reversible  that  class-teacher  X  might 
carry  out  with  class  A  the  progi'am  as  proposed  herein 
for  the  morning  session,  and  then  in  the  afternoon  re- 
peat with  Class  B  the  program  set  forth  for  the  morn- 
ing, of  course  with  the  omission  of  the  opening  exer- 
cises ;  class  B  having  taken  in  the  forenoon  with  the 
special  teachers  the  work  which  class  A  will  do,  ac- 
cording to  the  program  set  forth,  in  the  afternoon.  Of 


THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  63 

course  the  order  of  the  subjects  in  the  session  taught 
by  special  teachers  would  naturally  be  changed  for  the 
different  classes — class  A,  for  instance,  taking  the  pro- 
gram as  set  forth,  while  the  next  class  might  give  the 
first  period  to  French,  take  the  second  period  for  phys- 
ical culture,  etc. — so  as  to  enable  the  same  teacher  to 
take  three  or  four  classes  in  turn.  But  on  the  other 
hand  the  order  of  exercises  for  the  session  taught  by 
the  general  class  teacher  (the  "morning  session,"  as 
it  appears  below)  should  preferably  be  followed  by 
all  classes  throughout  the  whole  school,  so  that,  in 
case  any  pupil  should  in  some  particular  subject  be 
very  much  behind  or  ahead  of  his  classmates,  he  could 
take  that  subject  with  a  class  below  or  above  that  in 
which  the  rest  of  his  work  were  done.  The  conven- 
ience of  a  uniform  program  throughout  the  school 
system  for  such  a  case  as  I  have  mentioned  and  for 
others  which  may  occur  to  the  reader,  is  obvious,  but 
this  program  should  not  become  a  straight-jacket  for 
the  teacher,  to  be  followed  to  the  letter  at  any  cost ;  it 
should  merely  be  the  usual  thing.  Freedom  on  the 
part  of  the  teacher  in  the  execution  of  the  general 
purpose  of  the  school  should  be  encouraged,  and  she 
might  not  infrequently  find  it  advantageous  to  give 
all  or  the  greater  part  of  the  session  to  an  excursion 
into  the  woods  or  fields,  or  to  a  visit  to  some  indus- 
trial establishment,  or  to  work  in  the  school  garden, 
or  indeed  she  might  find  that  with  a  certain  class  more 
time  should  be  given  to  reading  and  less  to  arithme- 
tic than  the  program  provided  for.    In  all  such  cases 


64  THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

she  should  be  free  to  use  her  own  judgment,  of  course 
consulting  her  principal  or  other  supervisor  with  re- 
gard to  any  considerable  variation  from  the  standard 
program  and  of  course  being  responsible  for  the  re- 
sults of  such  changes  as  she  might  introduce.  In 
general  it  may  be  said  that  the  program,  as  well  as 
the  curriculum  itself,  should  not  be  an  iron-bound 
groove,  or  track,  within  which  the  teacher  must  travel 
without  a  hair's  breadth  turn  to  right  or  left,  but  it 
should  rather  be  a  cleared  path  along  which  she 
would  generally  be  helped  by  moving.  It  should 
exist,  not  to  cabin,  crib,  confine  teachers  and  chil- 
dren, but  to  help  them. 

It  will  be  observed  that  all  the  work  of  the  school 
except  the  art  work,  manual  training,  physical  cul- 
ture, foreign  language,  and  elective  work,  can  be  given 
in  the  morning  session ;  but  I  think  that  an  afternoon 
session  having  a  maximum  length  of  two  hours  and 
a  half  is  not  at  all  too  much,  especially  when  it  is 
borne  in  mind  that  the  plan  contemplates  no  required 
home  work.  For  boys  and  girls  between  eight  or 
nine  and  thirteen,  five  hours  and  a  half  a  day  of  in- 
teresting school  work  is  not  too  much ;  and  I  am  in- 
clined to  think  that  much  less  would  be  a  serious  loss 
to  them.  It  must  be  remembered  that  of  this  five 
hours  and  a  half,  only  two  hours  and  twenty  minutes 
in  the  morning  session  and  thirty-five  minutes  in  the 
afternoon  are  given  to  mental,  as  distinct  from  physi- 
cal and  manual  training ;  the  rest  of  the  time  is  taken 
up  by  recess  and  intermissions,  physical  culture,  man- 


THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  65 

ual  training  and  art  work.  As  to  the  nearly  three 
hours  a  day  given  to  mental  training  and  instruction, 
the  class  teacher  might  not  give  much  more  than  half 
the  time  to  class  or  group  recitation  from  the  same 
group  of  children ;  the  rest  of  the  time  being  devoted 
to  study,  either  by  the  class  as  a  whole  or  by  that 
part  of  it  which  spent  the  other  moiety  of  the  time 
in  recitation.  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  by  thus  dis- 
tinguishing study  and  recitation  that  the  class  exer- 
cise or  recitation  should  be  a  mere  examination  by 
the  teacher  of  the  boys  and  girls'  acquisition ;  it 
should  be  primarily,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  the  op- 
portunity for  the  teacher  to  help  the  children  to  a 
proper  appreciation  of  the  matter  in  hand.  If  in  a 
given  subject  the  teacher  had  not  divided  the  children 
into  groups  for  recitation,  she  could  spend  that  part 
of  the  time  not  used  for  a  class  exercise  in  individual 
work  with  different  pupils,  the  others  meanwhile 
studying.  If  the  class  were  large  she  would  probably 
have  with  her,  part  of  the  time  at  least,  an  assistant 
teacher,  or  training-school  cadet,  who  would  be  doing 
individual  work  with  members  of  those  groups  not 
at  the  time  engaged  in  a  class  or  group  recitation.  I 
have  suggested  a  noon  recess  of  two  hours,  and  I  think 
that  this  would  normally  be  best  for  both  pupils  and 
teachers;  especially  when  it  is  remembered  that  the 
school  is  not  to  be  (as  in  the  past  it  has  too  largely 
been)  a  place  in  which  the  child  is  to  receive  drill 
in  the  three  R's  and  acquire  a  limited  amount  of  in- 
formation as  to  geography  and  a  few  other  facts; 


66  THE    KEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

but  that  it  is  the  child's  opportunity,  his  most  favor- 
able opportunity,  for  preparing  himself  to  play  an 
intelligent,  a  useful  and  happy  part  in  the  natural 
and  social  environment  in  which  his  life  exists.  He 
should  do  this  in  a  somewhat  leisurely  way,  without 
undue  haste,  and  should  "live  by  the  way,"  "Keep- 
ing in"  should  be  strictly  prohibited  at  noon,  and 
should  only  be  allowed  in  the  afternoon,  if  it  should 
play  any  part  at  all  in  school  life,  in  such  exceptional 
cases  as  deliberate  refusal  on  the  part  of  the  pupil 
to  make  any  attempt  to  do  his  work  at  the  proper 
time,  or  as  a  punishment  for  malicious  interference 
with  the  work  of  the  school.  In  such  cases,  the  teach- 
ers of  the  different  classes  could  take  turns  in  stay- 
ing after  school  with  pupils,  so  that  no  teacher  would 
have  to  remain  often.  Of  course  the  length  of  the 
noon  recess  would  have  to  be  determined  by  local 
conditions,  but  the  initial  prejudice  of  teachers  and 
pupils  in  favor  of  a  short  recess,  so  as  to  make  the 
free  part  of  the  afternoon  longer,  should  not  be 
given  too  much  weight.  A  long,  quiet  noon  recess, 
making  a  real  break  in  the  day,  would  be  of  more 
value  than  forty-five  minutes  gained  in  the  afternoon 
by  rushing  through  the  day. 

Attention  should  perhaps  be  called  to  the  fact  that, 
although  the  system  proposed  has  so  far  assumed  that 
there  would  be  special  teachers  for  all  of  the  subjects 
assigned  to  the  afternoon  session,  yet  all  of  the  work 
but  the  foreign  language  could  be  given  by  the  class 
teacher  if  properly  trained  in  a  good,  modern  nor- 


THE    EEOKGANIZATIOX    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  67 

mal  school.  In  case  there  were  no  special  teachers 
(as  would  probably  be  the  case  in  most  of  our  smaller 
communities)  the  modern  language  would  doubtless 
be  omitted  from  the  school  curriculum  and  the  time 
set  apart  for  it  might  be  devoted  to  study  by  the  class 
and  individual  assistance  by  the  teacher. 

In  practice  it  would  probably  be  well  to  dismiss 
most  of  the  children  at  the  end  of  the  third  afternoon 
period ;  for  any  additional  work  that  might  be  elected 
— whether  in  music,  a  second  foreign  language,  danc- 
ing, drawing  or  painting,  manual  training  or  what- 
ever else  it  might  be — would  be  more  likely  in  most 
communities  to  be  taken  privately  than  in  school. 
Provision  for  such  outside  work  seems  to  me  to  be  a 
matter  of  great  importance ;  one  of  the  most  serious 
defects  of  our  school  system  today  being  that  it  so 
fills  up  the  time  of  the  child  as  to  leave  no  opportunity 
for  the  cultivation  of  a  special  talent.  As  a  result  of 
this  the  musically  or  otherwise  artistically  gifted 
child  is  too  often  driven  to  forfeit  a  general  education 
for  the  sake  of  properly  cultivating  his  talent.  To 
return  to  the  use  to  be  made  in  school  of  the  fourth 
afternoon  period,  I  would  suggest  that  it  would  be 
well  to  divide  the  class  into  several  groups,  each  one 
of  which  would  remain  in  school  the  fourth  afternoon 
period  at  least  once  a  week,  to  receive  individual  help 
from  the  teacher  or  to  study  under  her  supervision. 

Turning  now  to  the  program  itself,  I  would  explain 
that  where  the  subject  is  not  repeated  five  times  a 
week  the  figure  in  parenthesis  after  the  name  of  the 


68  THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

subject  indicates  the  number  of  times  a  week  it  ap- 
pears in  the  daily  order  of  exercises.  Where  two  or 
more  subjects  are  grouped  together,  a  -]-  sign  indi- 
cates the  desirability  of  devoting  to  the  subject  at 
least  the  number  of  hours  stated  and  perhaps  more, 
while  a  —  sign  indicates  that  the  number  of  hours 
stated  is  a  maximum,  which  might  be  lessened. 

Daily  Pkogkam  foe  Elemeisttaey  Depaetment 
Morning  Session,  9 — 12  A.  M. 

A.  M.  Minutes 

9.00  Opening  Exercises  and  Singing,  15 

9.15  Reckoning  and  Mathematics,  35* 

9.50  Intermission  (brief),  5* 

9.55  Writing  (3)  and  Spelling  (2),  35 

10.30  Intermission   (longer)  15 

10.45  Development  of  Civilization,  or  History 
(3 — )  and  Geography  and  !N^a- 
ture  Study  (2  +  )  35 

11.20  Intermission    (brief),  5 

11.25  Reading  (4  at  first,  2  later),  Composi- 
tion (1  +  )  and  Grammar  (last 
two  years,  2),  35 

Afternoon  Session,  2 — 4.30  P.  M. 

2.00  Manual  Training  (2),  Drawing  (2),  and 

Music  (1),  35 

2.35  Intermission   (brief),  5 


•  Or  30-mlnute    class  periods  and   correspondingly  longer   in- 
termissions. 


THE    EEOKGANIZATION^    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  69 

2.40  Manual  Training,  cont'd  (2),  A  Modern 
language  or  period  for  study  and 
individual  help  from  teacher 
(3),         _  35 

3.15  Intermission   (brief),  5 

3.20  Physical  Culture,  35 

3.55  Intermission  (brief),  5 

4.00  Optional  Elective  (4 — )  and  Period  for 
individual    help    from    teacher 
(1+)  30 

Note. — It  may  seem  unnecessary,  if  not  absurd,  to 
have  the  usual  five-minute  intermission  before  and 
after  the  period  for  physical  culture  but,  aside  from 
every  other  consideration,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
where  there  are  special  teachers  the  program  as  above 
set  forth  can  only  be  that  of  one  of  the  classes ;  the 
second  class  must  take  the  afternoon  subjects  in  a 
different  order ;  the  third  in  a  still  different  order ; 
hence  the  necessity  for  arranging  the  program  so  that 
a  brief  intermission  shall  follow  every  class  period. 
Of  course  in  case  the  subjects  scheduled  for  the  morn- 
ing session  are  given  in  the  afternoon,  the  necessity 
for  the  five-minute  intermission  at  the  end  of  every 
period  but  the  last  becomes  still  more  evident. 

Section  4.     The  Secoxdaey  Tkaxsitiox  Depaet- 
MEXT^  OE  the  School  fob  Pubescents. 

A.  Ix  Geneeal  : — Between  the  stage  of  develop- 
ment characterized  as  boyhood  and  girlhood  proper, 


70  THE    EEORGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

the  stage  for  which  our  elementary  department  (cor- 
responding roughly  to  what  in  American  schools  is 
sometimes  designated  as  the  intermediate  department 
or  the  grammar  school)  is  provided,  and  the  stage  of 
adolescence  proper,  for  which  the  secondary  depart- 
ment, or  school  for  adolescents,  or  high  school  is  de- 
signed, comes  the  transition  stage  of  pubescence ;  and 
important  practical  economic  reasons  combine  with 
theoretical  pedagogical  principles  drawn  from  the 
study  of  genetic  psychology,  to  make?  it  advisable  to 
plan  a  special  curriculum  for  that  critical  year  in 
the  life  of  the  young  person  in  which  he  or  she  passes 
from  boyhood  or  girlhood  proper  into  adolescence. 
Such  a  curriculum  for  the  secondary  transition  de- 
partment of  the  school  will  now  be  proposed.  I  fore- 
see that  no  part  of  this  little  work  is  likely  to  be 
more  severely  criticised  than  this  curriculum  for  a 
secondary  transition  year;  and  yet  I  am  inclined  to 
think  it  doubtful  whether  any  suggestion  contained 
in  this  essay  is  of  greater  practical  value  than  what 
is  here  proposed  for  that  year  of  school  life  whicli 
may  be  regarded  either  as  the  finishing  year  of  the 
elementary  school  or  as  the  introductory  year  of 
the  high  school  or  secondary  course  of  study,  but 
which,  however  regarded,  is  the  most  critical  year  in 
the  life  of  the  young  person  and  the  one  to  which  it 
is  of  the  utmost  importance  that  his  education  should 
be  properly  adapted. 

The  work  of  this  transition  department  is  planned 
for  a  single  year,  not  from  any  such  theoretical  con- 
sideration as  the  supposition  that  a  twelvemonth  (or 


THE    KEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  71 

more  accurately,  nine  months),  best  measures  the 
time  during  which  the  young  person  may  properly  be 
regarded  as  pubescent  rather  than  adolescent,  but  be- 
cause of  practical  considerations.  It  is  probably  true 
that  the  intensity  of  the  desire  to  get  a  birdseye  view 
of  things,  to  comprehend,  to  understand  things,  to  see 
things  in  their  larger  general  relations,  rather  than 
to  manipulate  things,  is  even  stronger  as  adolescence 
advances  than  at  the  moment  of  its  ocjaception;  yet 
it  is  especially  to  answer  this  need,  which  the  mind 
of  the  young  person  passing  from  boyhood  into  youth 
feels,  that  the  curriculum  of  the  secondary  transi- 
tion department  is  adapted.  The  important  practical 
considerations  that  point  to  a  year  as  the  normal 
length  for  the  secondary  transition  curriculum,  are 
that  the  law,  in  accordance  with  the  wishes  of  a  great 
part  of  our  population,  generally  permits  parents  to 
take  their  children  out  of  school  and  set  them  at  work 
at  fourteen  years  of  age,  and  that,  as  regards  a  very 
large  part  of  our  population,  both  children  and  pa- 
rents are  eager  to  avail  themselves  of  the  privilege  of 
finishing  the  child's  school  life  at  this  time.  The 
completion  of  the  Secondary  Transition  Department 
course,  if  only  a  year  long,  might  be  made  the  con- 
dition of  granting  a  license  to  work.* 


*  At  the  time  this  study  was  planned  few  American  school 
authorities  would  make  room  at  all  for  what  I  have  called  a 
Secondary  Transition  department  and  what  some  cities  (as  Los 
Angeles)  call  an  Intermediate  school  and  others  (as  Worcester) 
call  a.  Preparatory  school.  At  the  time  this  essay  on  the  Organi- 
zation of  Education  took  its  final  form  I  had  succeeded  with 
difficulty  in  getting  a  modification  of  my  Secondary  Transition 
department  substituted  for  the  usual  first  year  of  high  school 
In  a   western   city,    and   later   pushed   down   into   the    "grammar 


72  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

As  regards  the  young  person  himself,  it  is  probably 
true  that  the  restiveness  under  the  school  life  that  so 
generally  shows  itself  at  this  age,  the  impatience  of 
the  school  routine  and  school  discipline  and  the  eager- 
ness to  get  out  of  school  and  go  to  work  or  even  re- 
main at  home  and  help  in  the  work  of  the  household, 
is  largely  the  result  of  a  badly  constructed  course  of 
study  and  faulty  methods,  which  fail  to  recognize  the 
important  difference  between  boyhood  and  girlhood 
proper,  on  the  one  hand,  and  pubescence  on  the  other, 
and  fatuously  endeavor  to  feed  the  expanding  mind 
of  the  pubescent  with  a  mental  pabulum  that  has 
been  primarily  designed  for  younger  children  and 
that  is  generally  too  one-sided  and  scholastic  even  to 
be  quite  palatable  for  the  more  pliant  and  less  self- 
assertive  and  independent  age  of  boyhood  and  girl- 
hood proper.  Were  the  school  curriculum  more  wisely 
planned,  it  is  unquestionable  that  many  more  chil- 
dren would  be  desirous  of  continuing  their  education 
beyond  the  elementary  school;  yet  we  should  not 
shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  evolution  of  a  great 
part  of  our  composite  population  has  not  carried  them 
far  enough  along  to  make  the  higher  education  de- 
sirable or  even  possible  for  them.  A  condition,  not 
a  theory,  confronts  us  in  America,  as  elsewhere,  to- 
day ;  and  that  condition  is  that  for  thousands  of  our 

school"  period  of  school  life.  I  was  influenced  by  such  practical 
considerations  as  these  to  treat  this  transition  department  as  a 
short  course  to  be  substituted  for  the  usual  eighth  grade.  At 
the  present  time  I  rejoice  to  know  that  the  conservative  pres- 
entation I  have  given  to  the  subject  is  no  longer  necessary, 
and  that  a  number  of  progressive  cities  (including  my  present 
home,  Los  Angeles)  have  adopted  a  three-year  transition  de- 
partment beginning  as  low  as  the  seventh  grade. 


THE    KEOKGANIZATIOX    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  73 

Toung  people  the  advent  of  adolescence  marks  the 
period  at  which  (exclusive)  school  life  and  theoretical 
education  should  end,  simply  because  they  are  intel- 
lectually unfit  for  farther  systematic  advance  along 
any  but  the  most  practical  lines. 

The  year's  curriculum  for  the  secondary  transition 
department  is  designed  to  meet  the  needs  of  that  large 
number  whose  school  life,  by  reason  either  of  material 
or  of  intellectual  poverty  must  end  at  the  beginning 
of  adolescence;  and  at  the  same  time  to  be  no  less 
serviceable  to  those  more  fortunate  young  persons  who 
are  to  continue  their  systematic  education  through- 
out a  large  part  of  the  adolescent  period.  This  two- 
fold purpose  is  to  be  accomplished  by  giving  to  all 
young  people  at  the  advent  of  adolescence  a  sum- 
mary and  conspectus  of  the  fundamental  facts  of 
science,  history,  and  economics, — that  is  to  say,  what 
man  has  learned  about  the  world  of  which  he  is  a 
part  and  what  mankind  has  accomplished  for  social 
welfare, — and  by  giving  them  at  the  same  time  a 
taste  of  literature,  a  little  training  in  some  practical 
or  fine  art,  an  opportunity  for  a  year's  consecutive 
work  in  a  self-chosen  line  of  study  or  practice,  and 
throughout  the  year  the  most  careful  physical  train- 
ing. This  will  help  those  whose  school  life  is  to  end 
at  this  point,  to  go  to  work  w^ith  such  an  intelligent 
outlook  upon  their  physical  and  social  environment 
as  must  be  of  advantage  to  them,  both  materially  and 
spiritually,  in  the  struggle  of  life ;  while  those  who 
are  to  continue  their  education  in  the  school  for  ado- 
lescents will  thus  be  provided  with  a  rough  chart  of 


74  THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

the  scope  and  extent  of  human  art  and  science,  which 
will  enable  them  to  elect  their  future  studies  with  the 
greater  intelligence;  and  even  should  they  specialize 
quite  narrowly  in  their  future  studies  they  will  be 
protected  by  this  birdseye  view  of  the  breadth  and 
extent  of  human  interests  and  this  brief  summary  of 
human  achievements,  from  that  narrow  ignorance  of 
and  indiiference  to  whatever  lies  outside  one's  own 
field  of  study  and  effort  which  today  so  often  charac- 
terizes the  highly  trained  specialist  in  science,  art 
and  literature. 

What  I  have  suggested  and  now  purpose  to  outline 
with  somewhat  more  of  detail,  may  seem  at  first 
glance  to  constitute  a  pretty  heavy  program  for  a 
single  year ;  but  in  reality  the  course  is  light,  rather 
than  heavy,  for  only  the  elective  course  and  the  course 
in  literature  require  any  outside  preparation.  As 
to  these  two  courses  it  may  be  added  that,  should  the 
elective  course  be  one  in  some  line  of  manual  training, 
there  would  be  little  or  no  work  in  it  outside  of  school 
hours,  and  in  the  literature  course,  while  outside 
reading  is  to  be  encouraged,  only  a  minimum  of  such 
reading  and  little  or  no  outside  writing  is  to  be  re- 
quired from  any  one  who  does  not  enjoy  the  work 
enough  to  be  personally  desirous  of  doing  the  read- 
ing and  reporting  thereon  for  his  own  pleasure  and 
entertainment.  Physical  culture  is  really  to  be  cen- 
tral this  year,  and  all  the  work  should  be  subject  to 
a  competent  physician's  judgment  as  to  the  pupil's 
fitness  for  it.      While  it  might  sometimes   happen 


THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  Y5 

that  an  exceptionally  delicate  and  nervous  young 
person  could  not  take  the  whole  curriculum  in  a 
single  year,  yet  the  curriculum  is  deliberately 
planned  so  that,  in  case  the  great  physical  changes 
and  the  rapid  and  unsymmetrical  growth  that  char- 
acterize pubescence  should  unfit  for  much  systematic 
intellectual  or  physical  work,  a  minimum  of  ejfort 
and  yet  a  maximum  of  inspiring  and  entertaining 
occupation  will  be  at  hand.* 

B.     The  Cureigulum  for  the  Secondary  Transi- 
tion Department  should  consist  of: — 
1.     Required  Courses: 

a.  Science.  A  course  designed  to  give  a  general 
notion  of  the  fundamental  truths  of  nature  thus  far 
established  or  regarded  as  highly  probable  by  the 
students  of  natural  science. 

This  should  be,  in  the  main,  a  lecture  and  demon- 
stration course;  there  should  be  no  required  home 
work,  no  formal  recitations;  and,  from  the  nature  of 
the  course  and  its  wide  scope,  there  could  be  little 
opportunity  for  individual  laboratory  experimenta- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  pupils ;  but  the  instructor 
might  with  advantage  spend  the  first  part  of  each 
period  enlisting  the  pupils'  assistance  in  reviewing 
the  progress  so  far  made  in  the  course,  thus  testing 

*  With  the  omission  of  the  physical  culture  (for  which  the 
crowded  buildings  and  insufficient  appropriations  made  (alas!) 
no  provision)  the  course  herein  outlined  for  the  Secondary 
Transition  Department,  was  given  substantially  in  the  ninth 
grade  or  introductory  year  of  the  high  school  at  I^incoln  (Neb.), 
during  the  four  years  that  the  author  was  in  charge  of  that 
institution. 


76  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

their  understanding  of  what  he  had  endeavored  to 
make  clear  to  them,  and  taking  this  opportunity  to 
ehicidate  the  matter  still  further  where  that  should 
appear  to  be  necessary. 

The  subjects  following  should  be  embraced  in  this 
summary  of  contemporary  science:  physics,  say  the 
first  month,  carried  far  enough  to  make  it  possible 
to  take  up  chemistry  intelligently  the  second  month. 
After  physics,  chemistry,  astronomy,  geology,  phys- 
ical geography  and  meteorology ;  then  biology  (first 
botany,  then  zoology),  which  should  be  completed 
by  the  presentation  of  the  elements  of  human  phyi- 
ology  and  hygiene.  The  course  in  biology  should 
acquaint  the  pupils  with  the  general  structure,  life 
history  and  habits  of  typical  living  beings,  vegetable 
and  animal,  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest,  and 
should  point  out  the  correspondences  found  in  the 
embryonic  development  of  different  species  and  the 
resemblance  to  lower  adult  forms  seen  in  the  early 
stages  of  embryonic  and  extra-uterine  development 
of  higher  species.  This  introduction  to  biology,  and 
especially  the  attention  given  to  the  structure  and 
functions  of  human  brings,  should  make  evident 
that  thought,  as  well  as  emotion  and  sensation,  is  a 
part  of  the  life  activity  of  the  higher  animals,  and 
should  thus  lay  a  foundation  for  the  presentation 
(in  the  last  month  of  the  school  year)  of  the  simplest 
elements  of  psychology.  This  should  consist  in 
showing,  first,  that  there  is  a  correspondence  between 
the  emotion  and  thought  of  man  and  animals,  on  the 


THE    EEOEGANIZATIO]!^    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  Y7 

one  hand,  and  the  activity  of  their  nerves  and  brains 
on  the  other ;  that  bodily  actions  and  habits  of  action 
affect  our  thought  and  feeling,  and  that  our  thought 
and  feeling  also  affect  our  body;  and  hence,  inci- 
dentally, that  the  formation  of  good,  wholesome 
habits  is  of  the  utmost  importance  for  us:  secondly, 
that  it  is  easy  to  err  by  misinterpreting  our  sensa- 
tions of  sight,  hearing,  touch,  etc.,  any  one  of  which 
may  mislead  us  if  not  compared  with  our  other  sen- 
sations— ^thus  making  evident  that  sanity  and  wis- 
dom are  dependent  upon  the  correlation  and  com- 
parison of  all  our  sources  of  knowledge  and  the  ac- 
ceptance as  true  of  that  alone  which  is  consistent 
with  all  our  means  of  judging  of  reality,  Finally, 
the  pupils'  attention  should  be  brought  to  the  fact 
that  all  that  we  know  (whether  our  knowledge  relates 
to  "science"  or  to  "history,"  as  some  philosophers 
contrast  those  concepts),  the  whole  of  each  man's 
or  boy's  knowledge  of  the  universe,  is  only  what  he 
himself  feels  and  thinks, — either  what  he  is  directly 
conscious  of  in  his  sensations,  emotions,  and  thoughts, 
or  what  he  is  indirectly  conscious  of  by  hearing  and 
reading  what  others  say  as  to  what  other  people  have 
seen,  heard,  tasted,  smelt,  felt,  thought,  or,  in  a  word, 
been  conscious  of.  In  this  way  the  young  people 
may  be  led  to  appreciate  the  fundamental  distinction 
between  the  objective  consideration  of  the  things 
with  which  man  concerns  himself — the  considera- 
tion of  them  as  parts  of  a  great  universe  of  reality 
of  which  he  himself  is  but  a  small  part  (this  being 


78  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

the  way  in  whicli  the  boy  or  girl  has  previously  been 
in  the  habit  of  considering  everything) — and  the 
suhjedive  consideration  of  everything  as  a  part  of 
the  consciousness  of  him,  who  is  feeling  these  things 
or  thinking  about  them.  I  feel  confident  that  a 
competent  instructor,  by  properly  leading  up  to  the 
subject,  can  present  even  this  crucial  distinction  of 
psycholog}^  to  normally  intelligent  young  people 
standing  at  the  threshold  of  adolescence;  but, 
whether  or  not  the  pubescent  can  thus  be  led  to  pierce 
to  the  heart  of  psychology,  all  the  rest  that  I  have 
treated  under  this  heading  can  and  should  be  pre- 
sented to  the  pubescent  in  a  few  simple  talks  illus- 
trated by  interesting  but  simple  experiments. 

As  introductory  to  each  division  of  natural  sci- 
ence treated  of  in  this  year's  work,  or  at  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  presentation  of  the  special  science  in 
question,  or  else,  less  desirably,  at  the  end  of  the 
whole  year's  work,  during  the  last  fortnight  of  the 
school  year,  a  few  hours  should  be  devoted  to  a  brief 
sketch  of  the  progress  of  the  science,  calling  atten- 
tion to  the  biographies  of  some  of  those  whose  names 
have  been  most  closely  associated  with  these  con- 
quests of  nature. 

These  courses  should  be  somewhat  similar  to  the 
better  and  more  systematic  popular  science  courses 
offered  to  unlearned  adults.  Throughout,  the  hy- 
pothetical character  of  scientific  theories  should  not 
be  blinked,  but  the  test  of  legitimacy  in  theory 
should  be  insisted  upon, — to  wit,  consistency  with  all 


THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  <  !J 

observed  facts,  and  "workability",  or  effectiveness  in 
rendering  the  universe  comprehensible.  Text  or  guide 
books  of  the  several  subjects,  physics,  chemistry,  phys- 
iology, etc.,  might  be  put  into  the  hands  of  the  pupils 
as  the  several  subjects  are  taken  up  (provided  suit- 
able books  can  be  found),  to  help  the  student  to  a 
fuller  insight  into  the  subject,  if  inclined  to  further 
study;  the  pupils  should  be  encouraged  to  keep  note 
books,  and  should  be  referred  to  the  best  books  avail- 
able to  give  them  a  larger  knowledge  of  the  subject; 
a  syllabus  of  the  instructor's  course  might  be  put 
into  the  pupils'  hands,  if  nothing  else  were;  but  in 
all  cases  the  use  of  these  aids  should  be  left  optional 
with  the  pupil,  his  attendance  at  the  lectures,  or 
tail's,  and  participation  in  the  class  discussion  being 
all  that  should  be  required  of  him. 

While  every  effort  should  be  made  to  interest  the 
young  people,  while  the  subject  should  be  so  pre- 
sented as  to  give  to  reasonably  attentive  pupils  a  fair 
knowledge  of  the  most  far-reaching  results  of  the 
science  in  question,  and  while  the  information-con- 
tent of  the  instruction  should  be  as  large  as  the 
limited  time  and,  on  the  part  of  the  pupil,  the  limited 
experience,  the  immaturity  and  the  ignorance  of 
auxiliary  subjects  would  make  possible,  yet  care 
should  be  taken  throughout  to  whet,  rather  than  to 
sate,  the  interest  and  intellectual  appetite  of  the 
young  people ;  interesting  vistas  not  followed  out 
should  be  opened  from  time  to  time,  and  every  ef- 
fort made  to  show  to  these  young  people  at  this  im- 


80  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

pressionable  age  how  vast  and  interesting  are  the 
fields  of  science,  of  which  they  are  given  a  birdseye 
view.  When  possible,  occasional  popular  lectures  by 
distinguished  specialists  may  be  made  a  part  of  the 
year's  program. 

The  means  by  which  the  knowledge  presented  has 
been  reached,  should  be  indicated,  and  the  satisfac- 
tion of  being  able  to  discover  such  things  for  one's 
self  strongly  suggested.  The  necessity  for  a  consid- 
erable knowledge  of  mathematics  for  any  extended, 
first-hand  knowledge  of  physics,  astronomy,  etc. 
should  be  made  very  clear ;  and  the  like  necessity  for 
this  mathematical  knowledge  in  order  to  apply  the 
laws  of  physics  to  the  practical  problems  of  life,  as 
met  by  the  mechanician  and  the  engineer,  should  be 
driven  home.  In  short,  while  a  sincere  effort  should 
be  made  throughout  the  work  of  this  year  to  give  to 
the  young  person  a  fairly  systematic  and  comprehen- 
sive idea  of  the  true  nature  of  the  ivorld  lie  lives  in, 
of  the  operation  of  the  forces  that  affect  his  life  and 
welfare,  and  of  his  own  nature,  he  should  through- 
out be  impressed  by  the  vastness  of  it  all  and  should 
be  made  wise  by  becoming  conscious  of  the  extent  of 
his  ignorance,  so  that  the  desire  for  larger,  deeper, 
first-hand  knowledge  may  be  aroused.  In  summing 
up  the  history  of  the  development  of  each  of  the 
several  sciences,  advantage  should  be  taken  of  the 
opportunity  to  call  attention  to  the  most  pressing 
problems  still  awaiting  solution,  and  to  indicate  the 
points  at  which  the  students  of  the  science  in  ques- 


THE    KEOKGANIZATIOX    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  81 

tion  feel  their  ignorance  most  keenly.  In  a  word, 
the  young  people  should  be  made  to  understand  clear- 
ly that  at  the  end  of  this  year  they  have  but  reached 
the  threshold  of  the  world  of  science. 

b.  A  course  in  the  History  of  human  develop- 
ment, preceded  by  such  a  picture  of  primitive  man 
as  anthropology  suggests  to  us,  and  picturing  savage 
and  barbarous  life  before  passing  to  the  historic  na- 
tions; giving  the  probable  reasons  for  the  early 
development  of  a  fairly  high  civilization  in  the  great 
sub-tropic  river  valleys  of  Africa  and  Asia  minor; 
and  then  proceeding  to  show  how  the  present  eco- 
nomic, political  and  religious  institutions  of  the 
United  States  are  indebted  to  those  early  civiliza- 
tions ;  showing  how  the  torch  of  civilization  has  been 
passed  on  from  one  people  to  another,  variously  mod- 
ified in  the  transition,  imtil  today  the  descendants 
of  the  barbarous  hordes  that  inhabited  central  Europe 
in  the  first  century  of  the  Christian  era  have  achieved 
in  Europe,  America  and  Australasia,  the  highest 
civilization  the  world  has  yet  attained ;  showing  that 
the  aH  of  each  people  and  each  period  reflects,  as  it 
is  the  expression  of,  the  feeling  of  (the  dominant 
element  of)  the  people  of  that  time,  and  that  progress 
in  science  is  progress  in  the  (intellectual)  interpreta- 
tion of  the  habits  of  the  universe,  or,  as  we  usually 
say,  of  the  laws  of  nature ;  showing  then  how  art  and 
science  have  reacted  on  the  moral  ideas  of  people  and 
changed  their  political  and  religious  usages  as  well  as 
their  industrial  system.     At  the  conclusion  of  the 


82  THE    EEOKGANIZATIOI^    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

course  there  should  be  an  attempt  to  sum  up  the  re- 
sults of  the  moral  insight  gained  by  us  at  the  end  of 
these  centuries  of  progressive  civilization,  so  that  a 
high  and  yet  a  sane  and  serviceable  ideal  of  the  true, 
the  good  and  the  beautiful  may  uplift  the  hearts  of 
the  young  people.  The  meaning  and  importance  of 
the  social  sciences — of  economics,  political  sciences, 
ethics,  esthetics  and  philosophy — should  be  indicated 
at  least. 

This  course  should  be  given  by  lectures  and  auxil- 
iary conversations;  or  rather,  throughout  by  talks. 
Good  books  of  reference,  as  well  as  charts  and  maps, 
should  be  at  hand  and  should  be  referred  to  by  the 
teacher,  and  pupils  should  be  encouraged  to  make 
use  of  them.  As  regards  books  to  be  read  in  connec- 
tion with  the  course,  such  works  as  West's  Ancient 
World  and  Davis's  or  Webster's  Readings  in  Ancient 
History  would  probably  be  more  attractive  and  use- 
ful than  such  a  brief  compendium  as  Myers's  Gen- 
eral History,  on  the  one  hand,  or  very  elaborate 
Special  studies,  on  the  other.  Mrs.  Sheldon-Barnes's 
General  History  is  full  of  valuable  suggestions  for 
one  conducting  such  a  course  as  is  here  proposed. 
Historical  novels  should  be  recommended  to  make  the 
course  vivid ;  and  if  it  should  be  necessary,  as  a  means 
of  interesting  the  pupils  in  them,  a  few  hours  in  the 
year  might  be  devoted  to  readings  by  the  instructor 
from  the  best  passages  of  some  of  these  novels.  At- 
tention should  be  directed  to  the  literary  monuments, 
and  good  translations  of  these  should  be  at  hand. 


THE    EEOKGAXIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  83 

There  should  be  occasioual  readings  from  such  writ- 
ers as  Homer,  Thucydides,  Livy,  Commines,  Frois- 
sart,  from  Feuelou's  Telemache,  from  Chaucer, 
Swift,  Bunyan,  aud  the  balhid  literature,  as  well  as 
from  the  less  literary  remains  of  an  earlier  day, 
such  as  the  monkish  chronicles  (and  the  early  writ- 
ings of  Egypt  and  Babylonia-Assyria  should  be  sim- 
ilarly used) .  The  poems  and  romances  of  early  times 
should  be  given  some  attention.  Marco  Polo  and  Sir 
John  Mandeville  might  be  compared  with  Munchau- 
sen on  the  one  hand,  and  with  Livingston  and  Stan- 
ley on  the  other. 

The  course  should  be  so  arranged  that  the  gTound 
could  be  covered  in  four  days  a  week,  leaving  every 
fifth  day  for  exercises  of  an  auxiliary  character, — 
readings  and  discussions,  perhaps  debates  on  histori- 
cal questions,  plays,  recitations,  etc.  But  in  the  dis- 
cussions and  debates  care  should  be  taken  that  the 
standards  of  today  be  not  unfairly  aj)plied  to  a  diff- 
erent stage  of  culture,  with  different  conditions,  pos- 
sibilities and  needs.  Debate  should  be  used,  not  to 
intensify  prejudice  against  this  or  that  people,  per- 
son or  line  of  conduct,  but  rather  to  awaken  sympa- 
thy with  different  phases  of  life  and  with  unaccus- 
tomed points  of  view.  Pupils  should  be  encouraged 
in  a  friendly  rivalry  to  see  who  could  bring  to  the 
class  from  the  library  the  most  interesting  illustra- 
tive matter;  they  might  hand  in  to  the  teacher  a  brief 
statement  of  what  they  had  foimd,  bearing  on  the 
history  of  the  people  or  period  then  under  discussion ; 


84  THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

and  the  best  of  these  (or  occasionally  those  which 
showed  the  most  effort)  might  be  presented  to  the 
class.  Excursions,  visits  to  museums  and  monu- 
ments, etc.,  would  also  occasionally  have  their  place, 
so  far  as  these  would  not  interfere  with  the  work  in 
the  other  departments  of  study  pursued  by  the  pupils. 
But  all  the  outside  reading,  preparation  for  discus- 
sion, etc.  should  be  optional. 

c.  A  course  in  Literature  and  esthetics,  which  in 
most  schools  would  necessarily  be  almost  exclusively 
a  course  in  literature. 

One  hour  a  week  might  be  given  to  grammar,  com- 
position and  elocutionary  training,  and  in  connection 
with  this  work  the  a-b-c  of  comparative  philology 
might  possibly  be  presented  to  the  class;  and  one 
hour  each  week  might  be  devoted  to  the  most  interest- 
ing literary  and  artistic  creations  of  the  world  in 
chronological  order,  thus  making  a  valuable  contri- 
bution to  the  study  of  history  while  giving  the  young 
people  a  glimpse  of  the  great  world  classics ;  but  the 
greater  part  of  the  time — say,  three  hours  a  week — 
should  be  devoted  to  a  flexible  course  in  the  literature 
that  would  be  most  attractive  and  most  beneficial  to 
early  youth  and  most  likely  to  give  the  young  people 
a  love  for  reading.  At  the  beginning  of  the  course 
the  pupils  should  be  asked  to  tell  (either  orally  or 
in  writing)  what  they  have  read  that  they  have  most 
enjoyed.  At  the  end  of  the  first  week  let  them  write 
out  a  statement  of  all  the  works  they  have  read  that 
they  can  remember,  tell  why  they  like  this  that  they 


THE    REOKGANIZATION    OF    OTJK    SCHOOLS  85 

have  read  and  do  not  care  for  that,  and  state  what 
kind  of  reading  they  generally  prefer.  This  should 
be  done  in  class  unless  the  pupil  prefers  to  do  it 
more  elaborately  outside  of  school  hours.  These 
statements  should  be  carefully  studied  by  the  instruc- 
tor, who  should  work  from  them  in  preparing  future 
work  for  the  class  and  in  guiding  the  individual 
reading  of  the  pupils.  ,  The  pupils  should  under- 
stand that  these  written  statements  are  prepared  by 
them  so  that  the  instructor  may  remember  what  they 
tell  him  or  her  as  to  their  previous  reading  and  pres- 
ent preferences ;  here,  as  every^vhere,  the  pupil  should 
think  of  his  work,  not  as  a  formal  composition,  but  as 
something  having  an  immediate  purpose.  The  oral 
and  written  statements  of  the  pupil,  the  first  month  or 
so,  should  hardly  ever  be  criticised  from  the  stand- 
point of  form  (unless  an  individual  pupil  is  especially 
desirous  of  getting  such  criticism),  if  they  can  be  un- 
derstood ;  barring  such  cases  as  those  in  which  a  kind- 
ly explanatory  correction  by  the  instructor  would 
check  a  laugh  on  the  part  of  the  blunderer's  fellow 
pupils.  Everything  possible  should  be  done  to  make 
this  course  a  thoroughly  enjoyable  one  for  the  young 
people.  "Working  in  the  light  of  the  data  obtained 
from  the  pupils'  statements  the  first  week  of  the 
school  year,  reading  lists  should  be  carefully  pre- 
pared, and  some  notion  of  the  contents  of  these  lists 
at  once  given  to  the  pupils,  partly  by  the  explana- 
tory commentary  of  the  instructor  and  partly  by 
turning  the  young  people  into  the  library  to  thumb 


86  THE    KEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

the  book  themselves.  Each  pupil  should  be  required 
to  read  a  few  of  these  books  and  poems,  but  the  se- 
lection should  be  largely  his  own.  !N'ot  intense, 
analytic  study,  but  enjoyment  of  literature  should  be 
cultivated.  At  this  stage  of  growth  there  is  strong 
reason  to  believe  that  a  love  for  reading  will  be  better 
cultivated  by  a  wide,  than  by  a  thorough,  knowledge 
of  books.  The  library  should  be  large  and  have 
nnich  variety,  and  there  should  be  many  copies  of  the 
books  most  likely  to  make  a  general  appeal  to  early 
adolescence.  The  pupils  should  be  read  to,  and  en- 
couraged to  bring  to  the  class  the  best  that  they  have 
severally  read — that  is,  the  things  that  appeal  most  to 
them.  The  more  different  the  reading  of  the  individ- 
ual pupils,  the  more  interesting  this  exercise  might 
be  made  and  the  better  the  opportunity  to  cultivate 
expressive  reading  aloud  on  the  part  of  the  pupils. 
Of  course  if  A  is  especially  interested  in  B's  account 
of  what  he  has  read  or  in  his  extract  therefrom,  A 
will  be  likely  to  get  a  copy  of  the  book  for  his  o^vn 
home  reading.  A  part  of  the  reading  should  be  in 
common,  selected  with  prayer  and  trembling  by  the 
instructor  to  appeal  to  the  largest  number  and  yet 
enlarge  and  uplift  their  minds.  Such  of  the  ac- 
knowledged classics  as  can  be  used  with  satisfaction 
to  the  pupils  should  be  made  use  of;  but  a  classic 
should  not  be  forced  upon  them  merely  because  the 
judgment  of  adults  has  declared  it  to  be  a  classic.  In 
the  last  third  of  the  year  I  think  it  will  be  found  that 
the  work  read  in  common  can  safely  be  chosen  for  its 


THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  87 

beauty  and  strength  (as  cultivated  adults  judge  such 
matters),  and  that  almost  all  of  the  pupils  will  enjoy 
it.  Biography  will  have  its  place  in  the  literature 
read  by  the  youth  of  this  department  of  the  school. 
The  Bible  should  afford  a  part  of  the  field  for  selec- 
tion. I  would  suggest  that  beautiful  selections  there- 
from be  presented  to  the  pupils  without  expressly 
stating  to  them  the  source  of  the  selections.  When 
the  pupils  show  a  sincere  appreciation  of  the  excel- 
lence of  these  selections,  the  book  and  chapter  from 
which  the  selection  was  taken  may  be  stated  to  the 
pupils.  It  should  never  he  forgotten  that  the  great 
function  of  literature  is,  not  to  improve  the  style  or 
the  taste  of  those  who  peruse  it,  but  to  enlarge  the 
self  by  a  knowledge  of  and  sympathy  with  the  life 
and  thought  and  feeling  of  those  differently  circum- 
stanced from  ourselves  yet  sharing  with  us  the  funda- 
mental traits  of  human  nature.  As  regards  the 
choice  of  literature  for  this  stage  of  school  life,  it 
may  be  added  that  the  instructor  need  not  fear  to 
introduce  a  little  of  that  which  makes  the  greatest 
appeal  to  himself,  of  that  which  he  himself  enjoys 
most,  inasmmuch  as  his  own  enthusiasm  may  general- 
ly be  depended  upon  to  awaken  some  response  on  the 
part  of  the  pupils ;  but  in  the  main  what  is  to  be  read 
must  be  determined  by  the  preference  of  the  pupil, 
and  the  point  of  departure  should  be  the  best  of  what 
the  pupil  already  enjoys,  or,  at  farthest,  something 
really  good  that  yet  has  kinship  with  or  likeness  to 
the  pernicious  reading  matter  for  which  the  pupil 


88  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS 

may  unfortunately  have  acquired  a  taste.  Those  of 
the  pupils  who  take  to  reading  should  be  encouraged 
to  read  much,  reporting  title  and  author,  and  making 
oral — and  occasional  written — reports  of  the  plot  and 
of  the  charm,  as  it  appeals  to  them,  of  the  works  they 
read.  Should  two  readers  of  the  same  Avork  express 
opposite  opinions,  let  them  sometimes  try  in  oral 
debate  to  convince  the  class  of  the  validity  of  their 
Respective  judgments.*  This  sort  of  thing  may  lead 
to  written  persuasive  discourse  later. 

As  the  year  passes  the  instructor  may  be  more  and 
more  critical  of  the  oral  and  written  language  of  the 
pupils,  bringing  them  to  feel  its  defects  in  compari- 
son with  the  beauty  and  perfection  of  what  they  read, 
and  thus  awakening  their  esthetic  feeling  in  regard 
to  their  own  utterances,  yet  always  making  clearness 
the  chief  consideration  and  leaving  elegance  and  forc- 
ibleness  in  the  secondary  position,  being  assured  that 
the  growing  esthetic  judgment  of  youth  will  in  time 
care  for  these  things. 

If  a  pupil  is  markedly  disinclined  toward  reading, 
a  minimum  of  outside  reading  should  be  assigned  to 
him — say,  from  one  to  three  books  or  selections  in 
the  course  of  the  year — but  redoubled  effort  should 
be  made  to  learn  his  tastes  and  to  get  something  for 
him  that  will  appeal  to  him.  With  some  young 
people  one  may  have  to  begin  with  what  is  not  prop- 
erly literature   at  all,  but  perhaps   descriptions  of 


*  This  seems  to  me  to  be  much  more  wholesome  than  the  usual 
school  debating  upon  questions  as  to  which  an  artificial  enthu- 
siasm for  one  side  or  the  other  is  worked  up. 


THE    REORGANIZATION    OF    OUR    SCHOOLS  89 

physical  and  mechanical  constructions,  in  which  a 
certain  class  of  practical  minds  seem  j^reatly  inter- 
ested. Perhaps  the  minds  of  some  can  be  cultivated 
and  enlarged  by  architecture,  where  literature  seems 
to  fail ;  but  in  such  cases  such  literature  as  Ruskin's 
may  later  be  enjoyed,  and  thus  the  door  opened  into 
the  realm  of  true  literature. 

While  throughout  the  year  as  much  as  one  hour 
a  week  might  well  be  devoted  to  the  work  common 
to  the  whole  class,  the  greater  part  of  the  work 
should  be  adapted  to  the  individual  needs  and  tastes 
of  the  pupil. 

So  far  as  possible  pictorial  and  plastic  art  should 
be  used  to  reinforce  the  esthetic  impression  produced 
by  literature,  and  it  would  be  well  indeed  if  there 
could  also  be,  as  part  of  the  year's  work  in  literature 
and  esthetics,  a  series  of  music  recitals  with  simple 
explanatory  introductions. 

The  work  in  literature  and  esthetics  must  be  main- 
ly literature,  not  merely  because  it  constitutes  a 
broader  avenue  of  culture,  and  because  those  who 
leave  school  at  the  end  of  this  year  can  most  readily 
follow  up  this  line  of  culture,  but  also  because  it  is 
easier  and  less  expensive  to  get  literature  properly 
taught  in  the  average  community  than  it  is  to  have 
other  departments  of  esthetic  culture  properly  pre- 
sented; but  music,  painting,  sculpture  and  architec- 
ture may  all  play  their  part  in  the  gi'eat  city  high 
schools,  and  the  secondary  transition  departments 
should  have  the  same  facilities  as  the  high  school 
proper,  or  school  for  adolescents. 


90  THE    REOKGANIZATION    OF    OTJK    SCHOOLS 

It  goes  without  saying  that  while  it  may  be  possi- 
ble for  large  classes  in  science  and  history  to  be  met 
by  single  instructors  in  the  secondary  transition  de- 
partment, the  class  in  literature,  if  large,  should  be 
divided  into  small  sections;  yet  if  the  divisions  are 
not  formed  until  the  first  fortnight  has  elapsed,  the 
tastes,  acquirements  and  dispositions  of  the  pupils 
may  be  so  far  taken  account  of  as  to  group  together 
fairly  large  sections  in  which  there  will  be  consider- 
able homogeneity.  Too  great  likeness  among  the 
pupils  of  a  given  section  is  of  course  undesirable. 

d.  A  Course  in  Physical  Culture. 

This  should  be  alloted  a  period  a  day,  or  three 
]:)eriods  a  week  at  least,  should  be  directed  by  a 
thoroughly  competent  physical  director,  and  should 
be  individually  adapted  to  the  several  needs  of  the 
different  pupils,  although  as  far  as  possible  there 
should  be  work  in  which  all  the  boys  could  take 
part  together  (and  similarly  for  the  girls).  Part  of 
this  training  might  be  by  means  of  games ;  but  the 
great  purpose  of  physical  development  for  all  should 
not  be  subordinated  to  grouping  the  boys  for  those 
games  for  which  at  the  outset  they  might  be  respec- 
tively best  fitted.  The  great  endeavor  should  be  to 
get  the  young  people  started  in  good  physical  habits 
of  life  and  to  build  up  for  them  strong  and  healthy 
bodies,  trained  to  a  ready  and  effective  response  to 
the  will. 

e.  A  Course  in  Free-Hand  Drawing,  Music  or 
some  other  kind  of  Art-Work  to  be  pursued  at  least 


THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  91 

twice  a  week,  if  an  art  course  is  not  tahen  as  the 
elective. 

2.  Elective  Course. 

One  exercise  a  day  or  at  least  four  a  week  should 
be  devoted  to  a  subject  chosen  by  the  pupil  himself 
in  consultation  with  his  parents.  To  this  subject  he 
should  devote  himself  earnestly,  giving  as  much  time 
to  it,  in  school  or  out,  as  the  nature  of  the  subject 
might  demand.  This  subject  might  be  a  foreign  lan- 
guage, or  mathematics,  or  some  such  branch  of  fine 
art  as  music  or  painting,  or  some  practical  art  or 
gTOup  of  arts  such  as  commercial  arithmetic,  book- 
keeping, typewriting,  shorthand,  or  two  or  more  of 
these,  cooking,  sewing,  turning,  carpentry,  iron  work, 
etc. 

3.  Optional  Course. 

An  optional  elective  might  be  added  to  the  required 
one,  to  be  pursued  in  school  or  out,  by  such  students 
as  might  have  exceptional  strength  and  robust  health. 
C.     A  Program  for  this  year's  work  might  be  ar- 
ranged as  follows: — 
8.30 —  9.00  Morning  Exercises. 
9.00 —  9.45  Science  Course. 
9.50—11.10  Elective  Course. 
11.15—12.00  History  Course. 
2.00 —  2.45  Literature  &  Esthetics  Course. 
2.50 —  4.00  Systematic  Physical  Culture,  3  times  a 
week. 

Art    (Drawing,    Painting   or   Music), 
etc.  2  times  a  week. 


92  THE    EEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

This  program  allows  two  hours  intermission  in  the 
middle  of  the  day,  and  then  makes  the  school  day 
(including  the  last  hour  for  physical  culture)  last 
until  about  four  o'clock.  It  will  be  noticed,  how- 
ever, that  nearly  an  hour  and  a  half  is  provided  for 
the  elective  subject  so  that  there  w^ould  be  little  need 
for  much  home  work  in  the  subject,  and  no  need  for 
it  in  any  of  the  other  subjects,  except  the  outside 
reading  in  the  literature  course  (most  of  which  would 
be  optional).  In  winter,  when  the  days  are  short, 
the  middle  of  the  day,  thus  left  free,  is  the  most  de- 
sirable time  for  freedom  to  be  out  of  doors,  and  in  the 
early  fall  there  would  be  plenty  of  daylight  after 
four.  The  plan  provides  that  practically  all  the  work 
be  done  in  school,  except  an  indefinite  amount  of 
reading  for  the  evening,  which  would  provide  an  in- 
teresting and  enjoyable  way  of  spending  the  evening 
leisure.  When  the  absence  of  home  preparation  is 
considered,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  school  day  should 
not  be  regarded  as  a  long  one ;  especially  when  the 
long  noon  recess,  the  long  period  for  physical  culture 
(only  a  part  of  which  would  be  given  to  prescribed 
physical  drill),  and  the  intermission  periods  are 
considered.  One  reason  for  concentrating  the  work 
at  the  school  is  that  the  high  grade  of  qualification 
required  of  those  giving  the  instruction,  in  the  synop- 
tic courses  in  science  and  history  especially,  would 
make  it  improbable  that  small  villages  could  provide 
the  instruction.  This  would  tend  toward  the  estab- 
lishment of  these  secondary  transition  schools  only  in 


THE  eeoeganizatio:n'  of  oue  schools        93 

the  larger  towns,  to  which  the  youth  might  come 
from  outlying  districts  miles  away.  In  such  cases 
they  should  be  kept  occupied  while  in  school,  their 
school  work  should  take  five  or  six  hours  a  day,  but 
they  should  not  have  it  to  attend  to  when  at  home, 
except  for  an  hour  or  so  in  the  evening,  after  the 
chores,  the  home  duties,  were  disposed  of. 

In  industrial  cities  and  wherever  the  demand  for 
them  exists,  the  courses  offered  in  the  secondary  tran- 
sition department  should  also  be  given  in  the  evening. 

SECTioiir  5.     The  High   School,   Secondaet  De- 
partment^ OR  School  for  Adolescents. 

A.  General  View.  "When  the  high  school,  or 
school  for  adolescents,  has  been  reached,  the  work 
should  be  arranged  according  to  the  annual,  semi- 
annual or  quarterly  classes  or  terms,  that  are  now 
usual  throughout  the  whole  school  period.  The  ad- 
vancement of  the  student  in  each  subject  should  be 
independent  of  his  success  or  failure  in  other  studies, 
and  the  one  test  of  promotion  should  be  ability  to 
get  greater  benefit  in  the  advanced  class  than  he 
could  get  from  remaining  in  the  lower  class.  In 
order  that  the  youth  may  get  the  greatest  advantage 
from  so  much  schooling  as  he  may  be  able  to  get, 
wherever  he  may  stop,  and  may  have  the  widest  pos- 
sible field  of  study  and  activity  before  him  at  all 
times,  there  must  be  both  system  and  elasticity;  and 
after  the  first  year  of  the  high  school  it  should  be 


94  THE    KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

possible  for  him  either  to  devote  himself  primarily  to 
the  acquisition  of  the  necessary  means  for  the  broad- 
est and  most  thorough  culture — in  which  case  his 
curriculum  might  correspond  in  large  measure  to  the 
college  preparatory  courses  in  a  few  of  the  best  acad- 
emies, high  schools  and  fitting  schools  of  today — or  to 
devote  himself  primarily  to  some  one  of  the  practical 
arts  of  life — in  which  case  his  curriculum  might  be 
similar  to  some  one  of  the  courses  of  study  given  in 
technological,  commercial,  manual  training,  or  even 
in  one  of  the  best  trade  schools.  The  extent  to  which 
elective  courses  should  be  offered  by  any  given  high 
school  would  of  course  depend  upon  the  wealth  and 
size  of  the  community  to  which  it  might  minister 
and  by  which  it  might  be  supported  and  upon  local 
conditions  generally,  such  as  the  predominant  indus- 
tries and  the  habits  of  life  and  the  nativity  of  the 
principal  elements  in  the  population. 

The  completion  of  the  work  of  the  secondary 
transition  department  or  its  approximate  equivalent 
in  scope  of  work  should  be  a  prerequisite  for  admis- 
sion to  the  high  school  proper. 

B.  The  FIRST  YEAii^s  work  in  the  school  for  ado- 
lescents should  consist  of — 

1.  English  for  three  periods  a  week.  At  least 
one  period  a  week  should  be  devoted  to  composition. 
In  addition  to  this  there  should  be  some  study  of 
literary  masterpieces. 

2.  History  for  two  or  three  periods  a  week.  The 


THE    KEOEGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  95 

work  iu  history  should  consist  of  a  careful  study  of 
some  one  period  or  institution,  according  to  scientific 
method,  so  that  the  students  might  not  only  learn 
much  of  some  one  topic  in  history,  but  might  also 
gain  a  general  acquaintance  with  the  sources  of  his- 
torical knowledge  and  the  methods  of  historical  re- 
search, and  thus  be  liberated,  on  the  one  hand,  from 
the  credulity  that  accepts  anything  that  is  recorded 
in  print  or  handed  down  by  tradition  and,  on  the 
other,  from  the  injudicious,  unenlightened,  "cheap*' 
skepticism  that  condemns  all  history  and  tradition  as 
wholly  unreliable  and  characterizes  it  as  a  lying 
farrago  of  imagination  and  superstition.  For  this 
purpose  and  with  a  special  view  to  the  benefit  of  those 
who  would  never  have  any  further  formal  study  of 
history,  a  selection  from  the  field  of  English  or 
Grecian  history  might  be  found  most  advisable,  but 
the  selection  should  depend  chiefly,  I  am  inclined  to 
think,  upon  that  in  which  the  teacher  is  best 
equipped,  whether  it  be  the  reconstruction  period  of 
American  history  or  the  age  of  Assurbanipal.  In  a 
large  school  where  considerable  work  in  history  can 
be  offered,  the  student  might  choose  his  subject  in 
history,  but  his  choice  should  be  enlightened  by  the 
advice  of  the  school  officers.  Whenever  a  single  period 
or  institution  is  taken  up  for  study,  the  teacher  should 
not  fail  to  devote  one  or  more  lectures  to  setting  forth 
the  relation  of  the  special  topic  to  the  general  course 
of  human  development, 

3.     A  laboratory  study  in  some  one  science  pur- 


96  THE    EEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

sued  for  four  or  five  periods  a  week.  This  laboratory 
work  should  be  supplemented  by  the  presentation  of 
a  general  outline  of  the  science  of  which  it  should  be 
a  part.  What  laboratory  science  should  be  thus  stud- 
ied would  depend,  first,  upon  the  resources  of  the 
school,  and,  secondly,  upon  the  practical  or  scholastic 
career  which  the  student  expected  to  pursue. 

4  and  5.  Physical  Culture  (three  times  a  week) 
and  Ai't  (twice  a  week).  The  physical  culture 
should  be  adapted  to  the  special  needs  of  the  individ- 
ual, ascertained  by  a  careful  examination  made  by  a 
competent  physical  director.  The  art  might  take  the 
form  of  drawing,  painting,  modeling,  carving,  music, 
or  any  other  art  which  the  taste  and  aptitude  and 
life  purpose  of  the  youth  and  the  resources  of  the 
school  might  render  possible;  or  the  student  might 
comply  with  this  requirement  by  the  private  pursuit 
of  some  artistic  line  of  endeavor  not  provided  by 
the  school. 

6.  Elective  work  to  an  amount  not  less  than  four 
nor  more  than  ten  hours  a  week,  in  the  case  of  a 
normal  youth,  should  complete  the  work  of  the  first 
year  of  the  adolescent  department.  In  the  case  of  a 
student  looking  forward  to  a  technological,  profes- 
sional or  university  career,  and  generally  in  the  case 
of  all  not  compelled  by  economic  necessity  to  devote 
these  elective  hours  to  special  preparation  for  an  im- 
mediate calling,  by  the  study  of  bookkeeping,  type- 
writing, carpentry  or  some  other  commercial  or  tech- 
nical subject,  the  first  elective  studv  should  be  math- 


THE    KEOEGAJflZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS  97 

ematics  (four  periods  a  week)  and  the  next  should 
normally  be  a  foreign  language.* 

Inasmuch  as  the  student  would  presumably  have 
studied  one  modern  language  throughout  the  four 
years  or  so  of  the  intermediate  or  elementary  depart- 
ment (the  "school  for  boyhood  and  girlhood  proper"), 
and  would  thus  have  acquired  a  considerable  degree 
of  proficiency  in  it,  I  think  that  the  student  desiring 
a  broad  culture  should  be  advised  to  make  Latin  the 
language  choice  of  this  year  (devoting  four  periods  a 
week  to  it  and  perhaps  one  to  the  continuation  of  the 
modern  language  he  has  studied  in  the  elementary 
school).  I  recommend  Latin,  not  because  of  its  lit- 
erary value,  which  seems  to  me  markedly  inferior  to 
Greek  and  to  the  modern  languages  of  the  leading 
culture  nations  of  our  own  day,  nor  because  it  is  nec- 
cessary  for  the  acquirement  of  a  notion  of  classical 
culture  (which  can  be  acquired  in  other  ways,  and  in 
respect  to  which  I  would  observe  that  the  earnest 
student  of  history,  literature  and  art  whose  studies 
are  carried  on  through  the  medium  of  his  vernacular, 
may  be  greatly  the  superior  of  the  man  who  has 
studied  Latin  and  Greek  six  or  more  years),  nor  yet 
because  of  Latin's  supposed  peculiar  fitness  to  impart 
mental  discipline  (in  which  respect  I  fail  to  see  any 
marked  superiority  over  German),  but  because  this 


•  It  would  be  dlfBcult  to  overestimate  the  cultural  value  of  the 
study  of  the  language  and  literature  of  one  or  more  foreign 
peoples,  In  enabling  one  to  look  at  life  from  a  somewhat  differ- 
ent emotional  and  Intellectual  standpoint  from  that  of  our  own 
(Anglo-Saxon)  civilization — its  value,  that  Is,  in  giving  one  a 
method  of  triangulatlon  that  will  enable  him  to  estimate  more 
truly  the  magnitude  and  the  meaning  of  life. 


98  THE    EEORGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS 

language  is  at  present  a  necessary  tool  for  original 
research  into  the  history  of  almost  every  institution 
of  civilization  and  of  every  art  and  science  that  is  not 
of  very  recent  birth,  and  because  as  the  source  of  a 
great  percentage  of  English  words  and  as  a  language 
from  which  words  and  phrases  are  much  quoted  in  the 
literature  of  our  own  and  of  all  other  modem  lan- 
guages, and  as  the  basis  of  many  important  modem 
languages,  including  French,  Italian  and  Spanish, 
and  finally  as  a  highly  inflected  language  the  gram- 
mar of  which  has  been  very  carefully  worked  out  and 
the  structure  of  which  is  continually  used  for  the 
illustration  of  philological  and  linguistic  studies — it 
has  a  great  many  practical  claims  upon  the  present- 
day  scholar,  and  its  total  neglect  would  seriously 
limit  his  efficiency  as  a  student  and  investigator  and 
the  fulness  of  his  enjoyment  as  a  man  of  culture. 
Once  taken  up,  I  think  the  study  of  Latin  should 
preferably  be  pursued  for  three  or  four  years  (at 
least  four  periods  a  week),  taking  up  Virgil  the  last 
half  of  the  third  year.  I  do  not  think  a  longer  period 
than  three  years  necessary  for  one  who  does  not  in- 
tend to  devote  himself  especially  to  classical  literature 
or  to  philology,  and  I  believe  that  shorter  period  of 
study — two  years,  or  even  one  year,  would  not  be 
without  value. 

Whenever  a  second  language  is  taken  up,  it  would 
be  well  to  give  not  more  than  four  periods  a  week  to 
it,  so  as  to  leave  one  period  a  week  for  the  continu- 
ance of  the  foreign  language  previously  studied,  if 


THE    REOKGANIZATION    OF    OUK    SCHOOLS  99 

the  latter  would  otherwise  be  discontinued.  We  need 
in  America  to  get  away  from  the  mechanical  notion 
that  all  school  studies  should  be  taken  five  times 
a  week. 

During  the  first  year  of  the  school  for  adolescents^ 
at  least,  provision  should  be  made  for  study  under 
the  direct  supervision  of  the  teacher,  either  by  means 
of  "double  periods"  (the  students  spending  part  of 
the  period  in  a  class  exercise  and  the  other  part  in 
preparation  for  the  next  day's  class  exercise  under 
the  eye  of  the  teacher,  thus  giving  the  latter  an  oppor- 
tunity to  help  individually  those  who  need  to  learn 
how  to  study  or  who  have  special  difficulty  with  the 
assigned  task)  or  by  means  of  a  special  hour  with 
the  teacher,  to  be  assigned  for  those  students  who  do 
not  seem  to  prepare  properly  for  the  class  exercise. 

C.  After  This  First  Year  of  the  school  for  ad- 
olescents all  hut  from  six  to  ten  hours,  for  physical 
culture,  art  and  English,  might  he  elective;  election 
of  course,  being  subject  to  the  fact  that  a  certain 
order  of  studies  is  prescribed  by  common  sense  and 
ordinary  convenience  when  it  has  once  been  deter- 
mined that  given  studies  are  to  be  pursued,  and  sub- 
ject to  the  further  fact  that  any  intelligent  education 
would  naturally  take  the  form  of  group  electives 
rather  than  miscellaneous  individual  elections. 
Toward  the  end  of  the  secondary  course,  however,  all 
students  should  have  a  term's  work  in  psychology,  in 
political  and  economic  science,  and  in  the  history  of 
philosophy,  if  not  a  philosophic  review  of  the  history 


100        THE    REOEGANIZATION    OF    OUE    SCHOOLS 

of  civilization.  Although  the  study  of  English 
should  be  pursued  throughout  the  high  school  course, 
the  time  formally  devoted  to  it  might  in  the  later 
years  be  limited  to  one  period  a  week.  In  addition, 
however,  to  the  special  study  of  English  literature, 
all  the  work  of  the  high  school,  or  school  for  adoles- 
cents, should  contribute  to  the  study  of  English,  and 
all  written  work  of  the  student,  in  whatever  depart- 
ment of  study,  should  be  carefully  examined  and  per- 
sistently (but  not  hypercritically)  criticised  from  the 
standpoint  of  straightforward,  simple  and  forcible 
English.  It  would  be  well  to  have  English  teachers 
whose  class  work  would  be  light  enough  to  enable 
them  to  devote  a  large  part  of  their  time  to  the  exami- 
nation and  criticism  of  the  oral  and  written  work 
of  the  students  in  classes  other  than  English.  Oral 
discourse,  narrative,  descriptive,  expository  and  ar- 
gumentative, and  oral  reading,  as  well  as  written 
composition  and  the  appreciation  of  literature,  should 
be  carefully  cultivated.  The  work  in  history  and  in 
foreign  languages  especially,  should  be  made  to  con- 
tribute to  a  mastery  of  English  expression. 

ITo  electives  should  be  chosen  until  after  con- 
sultation with  the  pupil's  special  adviser  upon  the 
faculty,  and  with  the  principal,  who  would  naturally 
learn  something  of  the  student's  bent  and  ability  from 
the  teachers  under  whom  he  had  previously  worked, 
and  who,  if  fit  for  his  important  position,  should  have 
a  breadth  of  view  sufficient  to  enable  him  to  counsel 
wisely  in  view  of  all  the  conditions  confronting  the 


THE  REORGANIZATION    OF   OUE    SCHOOLS         101 

youth.  This  advice,  indeed,  should  be  no  mere  tri- 
fling incident  of  the  principal's  position,  but  should 
be  recognized  as  one  of  his  most  important  functions 
and  one  for  which  he  should  prepare  himself  by  a 
careful  study  of  the  conditions  of  life  and  the  indi- 
vidual strength  and  weakness  of  his  pupils. 

In  a  large  school  for  adolescents,  in  a  rich  and 
populous  community,  it  should  be  perfectly  feasible 
for  a  student  to  pursue  the  so-called  cultural  and  vo- 
cational studies  side  by  side  for  an  indefinite  num- 
ber of  years.  By  arranging  both  morning  and  after- 
noon sessions  so  that  two  youths  might  work  their  way 
through  school  by  being  employed  in  the  same  indus- 
trial establishment,  the  one  working  in  the  morning 
and  the  other  in  the  afternoon,  attending  their  school 
classes  in  the  reverse  order,  school  managers  could 
in  an  industrial  community  make  it  possible  for 
every  youth  to  get  the  full  benefit  of  all  the  education- 
al facilities  given  by  the  school,  however  long  and 
elaborate  the  courses,  without  cost  to  the  parent ;  for  I 
have  the  assurance  of  competent  and  experienced 
employers  of  labor  that  the  average  youth  of  sixteen 
can  easily  support  himself  by  five  hours  labor  a  day 
at  work  which  can  readily  be  learned  in  a  few  weeks. 
In  the  larger  cities  the  high  school  might  well  melt 
into  and  coalesce  with  the  polytechnic  institute  and 
the  college,  and  it  should  fit  its  pupils  to  enter  at 
once  upon  professional  or  true  university  studies 
without  the  intervention  of  any  college  baccalaureate 
course.      Our  present  system  of  four  vears  of  high 


102         THE  KEOEGANIZATION   OF    OUR  SCHOOLS 

school  followed  by  four  college  years  as  preliminary 
to  professional  or  advanced  university  courses  is 
merely  an  accident  of  history,  is  not  logical,  not  nec- 
essary, not  even  desirable,  and  is  rapidly  coming  to 
be  recognized  as  an  anachronism.  The  broad  foun- 
dation of  general  culture  should  be  laid  in  the  en- 
larged secondary  school,  or  school  for  adolescents,  so 
as  to  leave  the  student  free  to  specialize  as  closely  as 
he  may  desire  to  do  upon  passing  to  the  university  or 
professional  school. 

The  "Junior  College"  movement  is  a  wholesome 
step  in  the  right  direction ;  but  instead  of  regarding 
the  junior  college  as  constituted  by  a  definite  two 
years'  course  of  study  superimposed  upon  an  equally 
definite  four-year  high-school  course  and  leading  to 
the  junior  year  of  the  American  baccalaureate  course, 
it  would  be  well  for  us  to  look  upon  the  junior  col- 
lege simply  as  the  enriched  upper  high  school,  or 
school  for  adolescentsj([following  upon  the  Secondary 
Transition  Department,  "Intermediate  School," 
"Preparatory  Department,"  or  "Junior  High  School," 
as  the  school  for  pubescents  is  variously  callech,  and 
giving  one,  in  a  course  of  study  that  could  be  covered 
in  from  three  to  five  years,  either  the  preparation 
necessary  to  enable  one  to  profit  by  university  studies 
or  a  basis  of  general  culture  and  practical  efiiciency 
that  would  enable  one  to  enter  the  industrial  world 
fairly  well  equipped  to  play  one's  part  as  a  good  citi- 
zen, and  a  useful  man  or  woman. 

The  logical  distinction  between  the  schools  of  sec- 


THE  EEOEGANIZATION    OF   OUE   SCHOOLS         103 

ondary  grade  (with  which  we  are  now  concerned) 
and  the  university,  together  with  such  professional 
schools  as  belong  to  it  (wherein  are  studied  medicine, 
advanced  engineering,  advanced  agricultural  science, 
advanced  political  science,  advanced  history  and 
mathematics  and  physics  and  chemistry  and  biology 
and  philology  etc.),  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  primary 
function  of  the  secondary  schools  is  simply  to  impart 
a  knowledge  of  such  of  the  facts  and  theories  of  inter- 
est to  human  life  as  are  generally  admitted  to  be  true 
and  useful,  such  of  the  arts  and  sciences,  that  is,  aa 
have  reached  the  positive  stage ;  the  function  of  these 
schools  is  to  enable  the  student  to  attain  such  a  famil- 
iarity with  accepted  truth  as  will  enable  him,  not  as 
a  specialist,  but  as  a  member  of  the  present  genera- 
tion, to  make  use  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  of 
what  has  been  achieved  by  an  earlier  human  effort; 
while  the  function  of  the  university  '_(and  of  profes- 
sional and  technological  schools  of  university  rank) 
is  to  give  the  specialist's  mastery  and  to  so  use  the 
known  as  to  advance  into  the  realm  of  the  undiscov- 
ered. To  this  end  the  university  carefully  preserves 
all  that  has  been  learned  in  the  past,  regardless  of 
whether  any  practical  application  for  the  knowledge 
has  yet  been  found,  disseminates  the  most  recent  dis- 
coveries and  hypotheses,  trains  promising  young  men 
in  methods  favorable  to  original  research,  and  with 
their  assistance  projects  itself  into  what  had  previ- 
ously been  terra  incognita. 


104         THE   KEOKGANIZATION   OF   OUE  SCHOOLS 

III. 

As  TO  THE  Adaptation  of  the  Plan  of  Oegani- 

ZATION  TO  THE  VaRIOUS  ClASSES  OF  YoUNG  PeOPLE. 

Although  most  of  what  is  to  follow  has  been  implied 
if  not  explicitly  stated,  in  what  precedes,  it  would 
seem  to  be  worth  while,  for  the  sake  of  clearness,  to 
complete  this  exposition  of  the  proposed  system  of 
grading,  by  setting  forth  with  some  particularity  how 
it  would  apply  in  the  case  of  different  classes  of  young 
people. 

Section  1.     As  to  Gikls. 

As  to  girls  I  have  but  a  few  words  to  say  at  this 
time.  The  course  I  have  outlined  seems  to  me  to  be 
equally  applicable  to  boys  and  girls,  although  it  was 
planned  with  boys  chiefly  in  mind.  I  think  we  may 
take  for  granted  that  the  work  of  the  Play  School  and 
the  Primary  Transition  Department  should  be  the 
same  for  boys  and  girls,  and  that  the  classes  in  these 
first  two  departments  of  the  school  should  consist  of 
boys  and  girls  together.  A  certain  amount  of  train- 
ing in  the  fundamental  industrial  arts  would  be  a 
part  of  the  curriculum  in  the  first  three  departments 
for  boys  and  girls  alike,  but  it  might  also  be  well  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  curriculum  of  the  Elementary 
Department  to  make  the  manual  training  work  for 
boys  and  for  girls  somewhat  different,  initiating  the 
girls  more  fully  into  the  arts  of  homekeeping.  Except 
so  far  as  this  difference  in  the  work  should  make  sepa- 


THE  EEOROANIZATION    OF   ODE   SCHOOLS         105 

ration  necessary,  I  think  it  would  be  well  to  keep  the 
boys  and  girls  in  common  classes  throughout  the  El- 
ementary School  period.  I  confess  that  I  have  not 
yet  given  suflScient  consideration  to  female  education 
as  such  to  speak  with  much  positiveness  about  the  ed- 
ucation of  girls  after  this  period.  It  seems  to  me, 
however,  that  the  curriculum  hereinbefore  set  forth 
for  the  Secondary  Transition  Department  and  sug- 
gested for  the  Adolescent  Department  is  equally  ap- 
plicable for  youths  and  maidens,  except,  of  course, 
that  different  electives  would  normally  be  advisable 
and  that  a  course  in  home  economics  should  be  pre- 
scribed for  girls  in  the  first  year  or  two  of  the  Ado- 
lescent Department,  if  not  also  in  the  Secondary 
Transition  Department.  In  view  of  the  fact  that 
continuous  individual  progress  from  year  to  year 
throughout  the  whole  period  of  years  during  which 
the  subject  is  studied,*  rather  than  certain  definitely 
prescribed  attainments  as  the  conditions  of  promotion 
from  one  annual  or  semi-annual  class  to  another,  is 
the  method  I  would  have  followed  in  the  study  of 
foreign  language  and  mathematics  in  the  Adolescent 
Department  of  the  school,  I  do  not  feel  that  the  dif- 
ferences in  the  rate  of  growth  and  in  physical  and 
intellectual  vigor  in  adolescent  males  and  females 
make  separate  classes  in  these  subjects  necessary.  The 
instruction  in  these  subjects,  in  history  and  "the 
humanities"  generally,   and  in  physical,  as  distinct 


*  Compare  Search's  "Ideal  School"  and  Hornbrook's  "Labora- 
tory Method  of  Teaching  Mathemathlcs  in  Secondary  Schools" 
for  somewliat  detailed  expositions  of  the  method  to  be  employed. 


106         THE   KEOKGANIZATION   OF    OUR   SCHOOLS 

from  biological  sciences,  might  well  be  given  in  com- 
mon classes ;  but  tbe  instruction  in  human  physiology 
and  preferably  all  that  in  biology,  should  be  given  in 
separate  classes,  as  well  as  the  (prescribed)  work  in 
physical  training  and  perhaps  some  of  the  advanced 
reading  courses  in  the  several  languages.  It  seems  to 
me  eminently  desirable,  for  the  sake  of  that  larger 
education  for  life  which  is  of  so  much  more  impor- 
tance than  "book-learning,"  that  youths  and  maidens 
should  have  a  part  of  their  education  in  common 
classes;  but  such  common  classes  should  be  so  con- 
ducted that  the  girls  should  be  subject  to  no  serious 
disadvantage  and  to  no  embarrassment  by  reason  of 
such  irregularity  in  attendance  as  is  physiologically 
desirable  for  them.  Further  than  this,  whether  in 
mixed  classes  or  in  classes  wholly  composed  of  girls, 
the  latter  should  be  subject  to  no  penalty  for  not 
taking  review  examinations  or  subjecting  themselves 
to  formal  tests  at  fixed  dates*  (provided,  of  course, 


*  I  would  not  have  it  understood  that  I  regard  examinations 
as  useless  or  pernicious,  as  some  extremists  maintain,  yet,  as 
they  are  usiially  conducted,  I  regret  to  say  that  I  believe  they 
are  more  harmful  than  helpful  to  girls.  The  nervous  strain 
is  frequently  very  injurious,  and  the  thought  of  a  coming 
examination  too  frequently  encourages  an  illiberal,  literal  method 
of  study,  to  which  in  our  present  stage  of  culture,  girls  seem 
somewhat  more  inclined  than  young  men.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  mental  training  that  the  review  examination  gives,  which 
is  so  valuable  for  the  man  of  affairs,  the  lawyer,  the  publicist, 
is  generally  less  necessary  for  girls  than  for  boys,  unless  the 
girls  are  preparing  for  the  teaching  profession.  Yet  it  is  for 
this  mental  training  that  examinations  are  primarily  valuable. 
They  are  to  be  regarded  more  as  a  means  of  education  than 
as  a  test  of  knowledge.  Properly  planned  and  conducted  they 
are  of  great  value  in  encouraging  one  to  review,  reorganize  and 
summarize — and  thus  make  one's  own — the  facts  and  the 
underlying  principles  that  have  constituted  the  subject  matter 
of  one's  study  for  a  considerable  period  of  time.  And  in  addi- 
tion to  this,   it  should  not  be  forgotten   that  even    "cramming" 


TUB  KEORGAXIZATION    OF   OUR   SCHOOLS         107 

that  their  daily  work  shows  that  they  are  fairly  atten- 
tive to  their  class  duties*).  So  far  as  such  exercises 
may  be  necessary,  they  should  be  arranged  for  at  the 
convenience  of  the  girls  individually.  If  these  mat- 
ters could  not  be  arranged  satisfactorily  in  common 
classes,  the  classes  for  youths  and  for  girls  should  be 
separate.  But  in  most  cases  I  am  of  the  opinion 
that  they  could  be  satisfactorily  arranged. 

Section  2.     The  I^ormally  Developing  Child 
OF  Average  Ability. 

The  normal  child  might  well  enter  The  Play 
School  (or  Primary  Department)  at  four  or  five  years 
of  age,  and  spend  not  less  than  two  years  there  under 
the  same  teacher  with  a  class  most  of  whom  would 
have  begim  their  school  life  at  the  same  time  he  did. 
At  the  end  of  two  or  threef  years,  his  teacher 
would  start  with  another  class  of  beginners,  and 
at  the  same  time  he  and  those  of  his  classmates  who 
had  not  already  been  transferred  would  pass  into  The 
Primary  Transition  Department,  where  he  would 
normally  spend  from  one  to  two  years  under  his  sec- 

for  an  examination,  although  the  knowledge  thus  gathered  to- 
gether and  held  in  the  mind  for  a  few  hours,  or  days  (I.  e. 
until  the  examination  is  passed)  is  then  almost  wholly  for- 
gotten, is  by  no  means  a  valueless  exercise.  This  power  of  gath- 
ering together  in  a  short  time,  and  holding  in  mind  for  a  brief 
period,  a  large  body  of  facts,  is  of  great  value  to  the  lawyer, 
the  statesman,  the  public  speaker  of  any  kind;  and  not  onlv  to 
the  lecturer,  but  hardly  less  so  to  the  reviewer  and  "  tlie 
journalist. 

•  In  which  case  they  might  be  given  a  B  grade  without  an 
examination. 

t  W^hether  two  or  three  or  three  and  a  half  years  would  be  the 
normal  term  for  the  Play  School  must  be  determined  by  experi- 
ment. 


108         THE   EEOKGANIZATION    OF   OUR  SCHOOLS 

end  teacher,  continuing  the  occupations  of  the 
Play  School,  or  a  part  of  them,  under  the  same  gen- 
eral methods. 

As  far  as  mental  training  and  moral  development 
are  concerned,  it  might  generally  be  possible  for  the 
child  to  take  up  the  work  of  the  Elementary  Depart- 
ment, the  school  of  boyhood  and  girlhood  proper  (cor- 
responding in  a  general  way  to  what  in  our  American 
public  schools  is  often  called  the  intermediate  de- 
partment or  grammar  school, — the  Play  School  and 
the  Primary  Transition  Department  together  corre- 
sponding to  the  kindergarten  and  primary  depart- 
ments of  the  present  school  system),  after  one  year 
in  the  Primary  Transition  Department,  or  even 
immediately  upon  passing  from  the  Play  School.  The 
object  of  keeping  a  child  in  the  Primary  Transition 
Department  as  long  as  two  years  (or  longer)  would 
simply  be  to  make  sure  that  he  had  completely 
passed  through  what  is  sometimes  called  the  crisis  of 
second  dentition,  the  period  of  lessened  vitality  that 
often,  if  not  always,  marks  that  stage  in  the  develop- 
ment of  a  child  when  his  brain  has  approximately  at- 
tained its  full  bulk  and  he  is  rapidly  losing  his  first 
and  gaining  his  second  teeth.  When  this  period  of 
development  has  been  safely  passed  through,  and  not 
until  then,  whether  it  be  after  one,  two,  two  and  a 
half,  or  three  years  in  the  Primary  Transition  De- 
partment, and  when  the  child  has  entered  upon  that 
period,  generally  marked  by  sturdiness  and  steady 
growth,  described  above  as  characteristic  of  boyhood 


THE  EEOEGANIZATION    OF   OUE   SCHOOLS         100 

or  girlhood  proper,  as  distinguished  from  childhood 
on  the  one  hand  and  adolescence  on  the  other,  then 
the  boy  or  girl  should  be  advanced  into  the  Elemen- 
tary or  Intermediate  Department. 

The  subject  matter  and  the  method  of  instruction 
and  training  in  the  Primary  Transition  Department 
and  the  Play  School,  would  be  so  similar  that  they 
might  be  conducted  as  one  continuous  class  were  it 
not  for  the  necessity  of  meeting  the  various  needs  of 
children  maturing  at  different  rates  of  development 
and  entering  school  at  different  ages,  and  were  it  not 
that  in  the  Primary  Transition  Department  the  health 
of  the  child  should  be  the  primary  consideration  even 
more  than  in  the  Play  School.  In  consequence  of 
these  considerations  the  treatment  of  the  children  in 
the  Primary  Transition  Department  would  be  more 
largely  individual  that  at  any  other  stage  of  the 
child's  life  prior  to  adolescence ;  and  this  department 
is  especially  designed  to  give  to  the  curriculum  as  a 
whole  the  elasticity  it  should  have,  and  with  this  end 
in  view  it  affords  the  opportunity  for  considerable 
interruptions  of  the  routine  of  school  life  in  case 
such  interruptions  should  seem  desirable  for  any 
child.  In  the  case  of  an  especially  delicate  child  the 
time  covered  by  this  stage  of  development  could  be 
spent  in  out-of-door  life  wholly  outside  the  school, 
and  the  child  of  rich  parents  might  be  out  of  school 
at  this  time  acquiring  a  foreign  language  by  the  nat- 
ural, conversational  method.  During  the  two  or 
three  years  of  the  Play  School  the  normal  course  of 


110         THE   EEOEGANIZATION   OF    OUE   SCHOOLS 

development  and  unfolding  of  the  child's  mind  should 
be  carefully  ministered  to  according  to  the  best 
knowledge  attainable  in  the  light  of  child  study  and 
comparative  psychology  and  physiology,  and  here  the 
teacher's  procedure  would  exhibit  its  method  in  a 
fairly  regular  and  uniform  progression.  In  the  Pri- 
mary Transition  Department,  however,  while  the  ef- 
fort should  be  made  to  keep  the  child  from  losing  what 
it  might  have  gained  in  moral  training  in  the  Play 
School,  and  to  keep  its  mind  open  to  the  beauty  and 
interest  of  the  myriad  phases  of  life,  and  to  encourage 
the  gTadual  perception  of  the  orderly  development  of 
all  that  is,  yet  a  larger  freedom  of  individual  treat- 
ment of  the  children  would  be  possible  and  desirable 
here,  and  a  systematic  line  of  development  would  be 
less  necessary. 

The  Elementary  Department  would  be  entered  by 
the  normal  child  whose  course  we  have  been  follow- 
ing, in  his  ninth  or  tenth  year,  and  here  he  would 
usually  spend  about  four  years  under  the  same 
teacher,  who  would  conduct  him  through  the  whole 
elementary  school  curriculum,  with  the  assistance,  in 
the  larger  cities,  of  special  teachers  for  manual  train- 
ing, physical  culture,  and  foreign  language,  and  for 
music,  drawing,  etc. 

The  Secondary  Transition  Department  would  then 
be  entered  by  our  normal  child  in  his  thirteenth  or 
fourteenth  year,  and  its  course  would  ordinarily  be 
completed  in  a  year. 

The  Adolescent  Department,   Secondary  Depart- 


THE   REOEGAXIZATIOX    OF   OUK   SCHOOLS         111 

ment,  or  High  School  would  be  entered  by  tbe  young 
person  who  bad  spent  but  a  year  in  the  Secondary 
Transition  Department,  in  bis  fourteenth  or  fifteenth 
year;  and  here  be  might  remain  from  one  to  five 
years  or  longer,  according  to  bis  plans  for  life,  taking 
such  a  course  as  might  suit  him. 

Every  effort  should  be  made  by  the  public  and 
school  authorities,  as  well  as  by  the  parents,  to  give 
the  youth  or  maiden,  at  least  the  first  year  of  the  Ad- 
olescent Department,  or  High  School  course,  before 
allowing  him  or  her  to  leave  school.  If  the  law  should 
provide  that  admission  to  the  Secondary  Transition 
Department  should  be  granted  to  every  child  who 
had  attained  the  age  of  thirteen  at  tbe  beginning  of 
the  school  year,  in  case  the  parent  should  demand  it 
(regardless  of  the  young  person's  definite  attain- 
ments in  scholarship  at  that  time),  and  should  pro- 
vide further  that,  after  attending  for  a  year  the 
classes  provided  for  in  the  Secondary  Transition  De- 
partment, the  youth  should  be  granted  admission  to 
the  first  year  classes  of  the  Adolescent  Department,  it 
would  be  perfectly  feasible  to  make  one  year's  work 
in  the  high  school,  or  Adolescent  Department,  the 
minimum  limit  of  compulsory  education  for  all 
young  persons  not  excused  therefrom  by  reason  of 
physical  or  mental  inferiority  as  determined  by  a 
competent  physician's  certificate.  (In  any  case  the 
completion  of  the  Secondary  Transition  year  should 
be  required.)  Let  me  add  that  I  do  not  shrink  from 
any  necessary  corollary  of  what  I  have  just  proposed, 


112         THE   KEORGANIZATION   OF   OTTB  SCHOOLS 

such  as  providing  at  public  expense  the  necessary 
food  or  clothing  or  shelter  for  orphans  or  the  children 
of  parents  too  poor  to  keep  their  children  at  school 
until  the  completion  of  their  fifteenth  year.  The 
poverty  or  illiberality  of  parents  should  not  be  al- 
lov7ed  to  deprive  the  men  and  women  of  tomorrow  of 
a  sufficient  introduction  to  the  rudiments  of  art  and 
science  to  make  them  capable  workers  and  intelligent 
citizens  of  the  world.  I  am  sure  that  a  careful  statis- 
tical investigation  of  the  subject  will  convince  the 
most  skeptical  that  the  state  that  allowed  no  person 
of  normal  (physical  or  mental)  health  to  enter  upon 
his  or  her  life  work  with  less  education  than  I  have 
suggested  as  a  minimum,  would  from  the  economic 
standpoint  find  itself  amply  compensated  for  the  re- 
quisite outlay  by  reason  of  the  increased  wealth  and 
tax-paying  power  of  the  community  as  a  whole  and 
of  the  individual  citizens. 

I  would  add,  however,  with  reference  to  the  ques- 
tion of  expense,  that  a  little  intelligent  co-operation 
between  the  school  authorities  and  employers  of  labor 
in  a  given  community  would  make  it  possible  to  re- 
lieve the  parents  (as  well  as  the  piihlic)  of  all  ex- 
pense for  the  support  of  their  children  after  they  had 
completed  the  Secondary  Transition  year  (at  about 
fourteen  years  of  age)  and  yet  enable  the  latter  to 
carry  their  seco7idary  education  as  far  as  they  might 
wish  to  carry  it.  This  would  simply  require,  on  the 
one  hand,  both  morning  and  afternoon  sessions  of 
classes  of  the  same  grade  in  the  Adolescent  Depart- 


THE!  EEORGANIZATION    OF   OUR   SCHOOLS         113 

ineut  of  the  scliools,  and  ou  the  other  hand  that  em- 
ployers of  labor  who  eonld  make  use  of  the  services 
of  adolescents  should,  instead  of  employing  one  per- 
son for  eight  or  ten  hours  a  day,  employ  two  persons 
for  four  or  five  hours  a  day  each.  The  employers 
would  probably  get  more  work  done  for  the  same  out- 
lay of  time  and  money,  by  thus  making  use  of  two 
sets  of  workers,  than  they  could  get  from  one  set  of 
persons  Avorking  all  day  long  at  the  same  job  and 
more  or  less  worn  out  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
day.  A  ten-hour  industrial  day,  would,  in  this  way, 
work  less  hardship)  upon  the  individuals  doing  the 
labor  than  now  results  from  an  eight-hour  day.  It 
goes  without  saying,  of  course,  that  the  pupil  thus 
working  his  way  through  high  school  should  not  go 
so  fast,  take  so  many  studies  a  day,  as  the  youth  who 
has  nothing  but  his  school  and  a  few  light  home 
duties;  but  the  former  could  probably  complete  the 
same  course  in  a  period  one-third  longer  than  would 
be  taken  by  the  rich  man's  son,  although  it  is  doubtful 
if  the  latter  would  have  as  valuable  a  preparation  for 
life  as  the  schoolmate  who  had  meanwhile  been  learn- 
ing to  take  care  of  himself. 

Section  3.     The  Child  of  Slow  Developmeivt. 

He  might  begin  school  a  year  or  two  later  than  the 
normal  child.  If  he  should  begin  before  six  he 
would  still  be  able  to  spend  two  years  in  the  Play 
School  before  entering  the  Primary  Transition  class, 
where  he  might  remain  until  he  were  nine  or  even 


114         THE   REORGAlSriZATION    OF    OUR   SCHOOLS 

ten  if  his  physical  development  were  very  slow.  He 
would  then  normally  spend  four  years  in  the  Elemen- 
tary Department,  at  the  expiration  of  which  time  he 
would  have  attained  his  fourteenth  year  at  least.  At 
this  time,  although  he  might  have  achieved  much  less 
in  this  department  of  the  school  than  most  of  his 
classmates  (notwithstanding  that  they  would  general- 
ly be  a  year  or  two  younger  than  he),  it  would  nor- 
mally he  desirable  for  him  to  pass  into  the  Secondary 
Transition  class.  If  his  health  were  good  and  he 
were  now  in  the  pubescent  stage  he  might  complete 
the  work  of  this  department  of  the  school  in  a  year, 
and  might  if  necessary  spend  the  five  periods  a  week 
set  apart  for  an  elective  study,  in  working  up,  with 
the  assistance  of  a  teacher  who  should  give  him  indi- 
vidual instruction,  those  of  the  Elementary  Depart- 
ment studies,  such  as  English  and  arithmetic,  in 
which  he  might  be  especially  backward.  The  English 
work  forming  a  regular  part  of  the  curriculum  of  the 
Secondary  Transition  Department  would  also  be  such 
as  could  be  especially  adapted  to  the  mental  imma- 
turity of  one  who  should  need  that  it  should  be  so 
adapted.  Upon  completing  the  work  of  the  Second- 
ary Transition  Department  the  youth  in  question 
would  take  the  prescribed  work  of  the  first  year  of  the 
Adolescent  Department  or  High  School,  and  as  much 
more  as  might  be  good  for  him ;  and  after  that  he 
could  go  as  far  in  his  studies  and  at  as  rapid  or  as 
slow  a  pace  as  might  suit  him. 

If,  however,  after  four  years  spent  in  the  Elemen- 


THE   REORGANIZATION    OF   OUR   SCHOOLS         115 

tary  Department  he  should  still  be  more  immature 
physically  than  his  classmates,  he  might  pass  into  the 
next  Elementary  class  below  his  own,  to  remain  an- 
other year  or  so  in  the  Elementary  Department;  or 
he  might  give  two  years  to  the  Secondary  Transition 
Department,  devoting,  during  the  first  year  at  least, 
the  period  a  day  set  apart  for  elective  work  to  any 
elementary  work  in  which  he  were  especially  back- 
ward, if  any  such  there  were,  and,  while  taking  the 
physical  training  and  art  work  both  years,  following 
only  the  science  course  and  the  English  course  the 
first  year,  leaving  the  course  in  history  together  with 
such  elective  work  as  might  be  desired  and  further 
work  in  English  for  the  second  year.  He  would  then 
complete  the  prescribed  work  of  the  first  year  of  the 
high  school  and  take  as  much  more  work  as  might  be 
good  for  him. 

Section  4.     The  Child  of  Exceptionally  Kapid 
Growth  and  Early  Maturity  of  Mind  or  Body. 

Such  a  child,  who  might  enter  school  at  three  or 
four  years  of  age,  would  also  spend  at  least  two  years 
in  the  Play  School,  and,  even  though  he  should  have 
passed  the  crisis  of  second  dentition  before  complet- 
ing his  seventh  year,  he  would  still  spend  about  a  year 
in  the  Primary  Transition  Department;  then  in  his 
eighth  year  he  might  enter  the  Elementary  Depart- 
ment. Four  years  later  (no  earlier,  however  preco- 
cious he  might  be,  unless  his  physical  development 
should  be  as  rapid  as  his  mental)  he  would  enter  the 
Secondary  Transition  Department ;  and  if  at  the  com- 


116         THE  REORGANIZATION   OF    OUR   SCHOOLS 

pletion  of  a  year  in  the  Secondary  Transition  De- 
partment, in  liis  thirteenth  year,  he  had  arrived  at 
puberty,  he  might  enter  upon  his  high  school  course 
at  once.  Even  though  he  were  not  as  mature  physi- 
cally as  mentally,  however,  he  might  nevertheless  take 
up  some  of  the  studies  of  the  Adolescent  Department, 
if  physically  robust;  but  it  might  be  preferable,  es- 
pecially if  he  were  delicate,  for  him  to  spend  more 
than  a  year  in  the  Secondary  Transition  Department, 
devoting  himself  primarily  to  physical  culture  and 
art  and  going  on  with  the  English  work  of  the  depart- 
ment, but  also  doing  some  special  work  both  in  contin- 
uance of  his  Elementary  Department  studies  and  in 
new  lines.  It  might  be  best  of  all  for  a  precocious 
but  delicate  child  to  spend  a  year  or  so  out  of  school 
until  he  were  physically  mature  enough  to  enter  the 
Adolescent  Department. 

Section  5.     The  Yottng  Person  Who  Has  Been 
Kept  Out  of  School  by  Illness,  Lack  of  Op- 
portunity, OR  Other  Special  Cause. 

If  a  mentally  normal  child  should  not  begin  his 
school  life  until  seven  years  of  age,  he  might  be  put 
at  once  into  the  Primary  Transition  Department,  to 
remain  for  two  years  or  less  according  to  his  degree 
of  maturity ;  after  which  he  might  enter  the  Elemen- 
tary Department  and  proceed  according  to  the  regular 
course. 

If  he  were  already  unquestionably  past  the  stage 
of  "childhood  proper,"  the  stage  for  the  Play  School, 


THE    REORGANIZATION    OF   OUR   SCHOOLS         117 

or  Primary  Department, — say  nine  or  ten  years  of 
age, — when  first  sent  to  school,  the  boy  (or  girl) 
might  still  be  put  into  the  Primary  Transition  De- 
partment for  a  few  months  for  special  instruction,  if 
it  were  not  the  beginning  of  the  school  year,  and  be 
there  given  the  rudiments  of  reading  and  of  number 
work  (if  he  had  not  already  absorbed  them  at  home), 
or  he  might  enter  the  Elementary  Department  at 
once  if  he  should  begin  school  at  the  beginning  of 
the  school  year.  Although  his  mind  would  probably 
be  less  well  developed  than  the  minds  of  his  class- 
mates, who  would  generally  have  spent  about  four 
years  in  the  Play  School  and  Primary  Transition 
Department  together,  yet  the  work  of  the  Elementary 
Department  would  be  so  largely  independent  of  what 
precedes  and  follows  it  that  any  normal  child  at  the 
stage  of  growth  corresponding  to  this  department  of 
the  school  would  be  able  to  pursue  the  curriculum  of 
the  department  satisfactorily  even  though  this  were 
the  beginning  of  school  life  for  him,  and  would  be 
able  to  leave  this  department  for  the  Secondary  Tran- 
sition Department  when  he  should  reach  the  stage  of 
puberty,  even  though  the  lack  of  early  opportunity 
would  probably  prevent  the  education  of  one  who 
had  thus  begiui  school  in  the  Elementary  Department 
from  being  as  thoroughly  good  as  that  of  his  more 
fortunate  classmates. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  case  of  a  boy  (or  girl) 
who  for  some  special  reason,  as  ill  health  in  childhood 
or  a  life  spent  in  the  backwoods,  were  eleven  or  more 


118         THE   KEOKGANIZATION   OF    OUE   SCHOOLS 

years  old  when  first  brought  to  school,  at  which  time 
we  may  suppose  him  to  be  wholly  ignorant  of  "the 
three  R's."  In  this  case,  if  it  were  not  the  time  at 
which  a  class  of  the  Elementary  Department  were 
beginning,  the  boy  might  spend  the  intervening 
months  in  the  Primary  Transition  Department,  but 
as  soon  as  an  Elementary  Department  class  should 
begin  I  would  put  him  into  it.  Further  than  this,  if 
he  should  mature  early,  should  enter  upon  adolescence 
at  thirteen,  say,  and  should  be  restless  and  dissatis- 
fied to  be  working  with  younger  or  less  mature  chil- 
dren, I  would  then  put  him  into  the  Secondary  Tran- 
sition Department,  even  though  he  had  spent  less 
than  three  years  in  all  in  school,  and  though  he  were 
manifestly  inferior  in  his  knowledge  of  arithmetic, 
English,  etc.  to  the  classmates  who  remained  in  the 
Elementary  Department  when  he  was  taken  out  of  it. 
^  Finally,  if  a  youth  should  have  had  no  opportunity 
for  schooling  before  adolescence,  and  at  fifteen  (or, 
for  that  matter  at  twenty),  should  come  to  school  un- 
able to  read  and  write,  I  would  not  only  not  have  him 
begin  in  the  Primary  Department,  I  would  not  have 
begin  in  the  Elementary  Department,  but  would  put 
him  at  once  into  the  Secondary  Transition  Depart- 
ment, having  him  devote  to  special  coaching  in  read- 
ing, writing  and  arithmetic,  the  time  spent  by  his 
classmates  in  elective  work,  and  in  the  English  read- 
ing course.  In  two  years  at  most,  I  am  confident, — 
judging  not  alone,  by  the  light  of  psychology,  but 
also  by  that  of  history  and  biography, — the  normally 


THE  EEOKGANIZATION    OF   OUE   SCHOOLS         119 

endowed  youth,  thongli  ignorant  as  a  savage  at  the 
start,  would  be  able  to  enter  upon  the  curriculum  of 
the  adolescent,  or  Secondary  Department  with  profit. 
Of  course  he  would  not  be  as  thoroughly  educated  as 
his  fellows,  who  had  had  the  advantage  of  school  in 
each  of  the  lower  stages  of  their  development ; 
he  would  be  at  an  unquestionable  disadvantage ;  his 
work  would  as  a  matter  of  course  be  harder  for  him 
and  would  seem  more  uncouth  to  his  fellows;  but 
nevertheless  he  would  be  able  to  enter  upon  and  pur- 
sue a  secondary  education, — and  should  be  set  at  that, 
not  at  primary  or  at  elementary  school  work, — be- 
cause he  would  be  in  the  stage  of  development  for 
secondary  education. 

Section  6.     As  to  Industrial  Workers  axd 
Evening  Schools. 

To  the  young  person  whose  parents  are  unable  to 
support  him  while  getting  an  education,  the  proposed 
school  organization  is  exceptionally  advantageous, 
lending  itself  readily  to  cooperation  with  such  an  or- 
ganization of  industry  as  would  permit  the  employ- 
ment of  two  persons  at  the  same  job.  one  working  in 
the  morning  and  the  other  in  the  afternoon  ;  by  spend- 
ing only  the  forenoon  or  the  afternoon,  as  the  case 
might  be,  in  school,  a  youth  might  support  himself 
while  pursuing  an  education,  and  might  carry  that 
education  on  as  many  years  as  he  should  care  to  give 
to  it.  If,  furthermore,  he  should  come  to  a  city  having 
such  an  organization  of  schools  at  the  age  of  sixteen, 


120  THE   KEOKGANIZATION    OF    OUIi   SCHOOLS 

or  at  a  greater  age,  still  ignorant  of  the  rudiments  of 
education,  he  could  be  put  in  a  special  class  in  the 
Secondary  Transition  Department,  until  he  should 
gain  a  tolerable  command  of  the  three  R's,  and  could 
then  proceed  with  the  regular  and  elective  work  of  the 
Secondary  Transition  Department  and  of  the  school 
for  adolescents  at  his  own  gait. 

As  already  suggested,  so  far  as  the  size  and  re- 
sources of  the  community  render  it  possible,  all 
courses  in  the  Secondary  Transition  Department  and 
in  the  School  for  Adolescents  should  have  morning, 
afternoon  and  evening  classes.  The  evening  school 
will  long  be  a  necessity  for  adolescents  and  will  prob- 
ably always  be  desirable  for  adults;  and  the  ideal 
evening  school  would  include  all  the  courses  of  the 
Secondary  Transition  Department  and  of  the  high 
school  proper,  in  addition  to  courses  for  which  there 
might  be  no  demand  during  the  day.  But  much  of 
its  work  as  a  continuation  school  could  be  done  in  the 
day  time  if  employers  could  be  brought  to  employ 
two  young  persons  for  four  (or  five)  hours  each,  in- 
stead of  one  for  eight  (or  ten)  hours.  There  would 
probably  be  some  inconveniences  experienced  from  hav- 
ing two  persons  fill  the  same  job,  especially  at  first ; 
but  these  would  doubtless  be  completely  offset — so  far 
as  the  employer  is  concerned,  at  least — by  the  greater 
efficiency  of  the  labor  of  one  whose  freshness,  vigor, 
and  good  spirits  had  not  been  worn  out  by  eight  or 
ten  hours  of  the  same  kind  of  labor. 

THE  END. 


UCLA-Young  Research   Library 

LB3011    .S21 

y 


L  009   593   168  9 


